


Survival

by AliciaMoonstoan



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Character conflict, Closeted Character, Creepypasta, Extremely Graphic Violence, Happy Ending, Horror, I'm being vague because this fic was written for shock value mostly, If you read it that way, M/M, Survival, Vague Ending, and the sake of a single bad pun, but that's life baby., homophobic angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 17:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 66
Words: 209,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20531834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliciaMoonstoan/pseuds/AliciaMoonstoan
Summary: Player can't remember anything from before the game; before his body was mapped out in simple binary, and his mind became nothing more than a control for his avatar. Player doesn't know why 4979 people are living in that world. He does know that, when it comes to companionship, he's the odd man out. Unfortunately for Player, the system has a solution, and it results in murder.Originally posted on fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11505274/1/Survival





	1. A Very Average Day

**Author's Note:**

> This hasn't been edited from the original wording and format because, frankly, I don't have time for it. Sorry about that.

Some claim they can remember a time before the game. Can they remember the heat of the real sun? The song of real birds? Do they remember a mother’s smile or the touch of a real human hand?

Because I can’t.

I am nothing but an avatar now, floating in an exact world of 1s and 0s made to mimic something that I have never known.

I’m a player. This is the game, and there is nothing else that matters.

* * *

Player woke up in his room, lying flat on his back in his bed. The sun, shining through the window, fell directly in his eyes. He didn’t shut them. He didn’t need to. The sun was not blinding.

He sat up, groaning. One hand ran through his hair as the other rubbed his eyes. The wake-up bell sounded again; a loud clanging noise of metal on metal.

Player threw the covers off and stood with a sigh. He walked with a slight limp to the chest on the other side of the room. It was stood on its side so that it was as tall as he is and opened like a door. It saved space that way.

There were plenty more chests in the room stacked on top of each other in corners and spilling their contents out onto the floor. Player threw a stray chunk of coal back into its chest. It left a black smudge on his hand, and he rubbed the mark off using a spare block of wool in another chest. The wool turned a delicate light-gray.

Player scowled and set the block on his bed. He turned to the upright chest and pulled out his clothes. Brushing dark-brown hair out of his eyes, he pulled on his mandatory blue T-shirt and blue jeans.

Some of the others had suits and ties, or lots of jewelry, or jackets with hoods that could hide their faces, but Player had this. It was his lot in life.

He gathered up a few resources from various chests and shoved them into his bag. It was an ugly leather thing, sewn with string. He had made it by hand. Everything without a crafting recipe had to be made by hand, and even though everything was supposed to be exactly as reality was it didn’t always work quite right.

Player slung his pickaxe off of its hook on the wall and onto his back. The blue of the diamonds gleamed in the pale sunlight. There was barely a sign of wear on it.

He let one hand touch the smooth wood of the handle, like touching a talisman. He recited under his breath, “Unbreaking five, Efficiency four, fortune 3.” The best pickaxe in the whole building. The only ones better were in the creative areas, where anyone with half a brain could make a pick worthy of a god.

A sigh escaped Player as he stepped out into the hallway. A long line of boys was already shuffling down it, yawning and groaning. In their hands were rough leather bags like his, on their backs were the tools of their trade. Hoes and swords, axes and bows. A few picks, but not many. 

Player joined the slow parade. He noted, for the millionth time, the lack of diamond. As always, he felt conspicuous with the gleaming blue pickaxe on his back, and he reached up and touched the handle, just to make sure it’s still there. He sped up so he’d be one of the first to the cafeteria. A few people grumbled as he went by, but they moved out of the way readily.

Player palmed the small black pad on his way into the dining room. A green light blinked and the turnstile allowed him to enter.

It was only here, in the very heart of the complex, that it was revealed there were Mods at work. The basic Vanilla security just wasn’t enough for this place.

The tables were mostly empty. A few early-risers were already eating or polishing their tools, or counting out currency and items for trades. The NPCs behind the counter were ready, big smiles on their faces.

Player walked to the counter. He keyed in his number on the pad; 4979. The keypad flashed green, a small sum of money was deducted from his account, and a tray was dispensed onto the counter.

Player walked down the line. Rabbit stew for breakfast. He didn’t mind; he took what he could get, and Player was extremely hungry. He accepted the loaf of bread offered by the last NPC in line and crossed to his table.

He took the pick off his back and lays it across the table in front of him. The bag joined it a moment later. Player sat with his back to the wall at the end of the table and started eating.

The rest of the players came in girls from the left, boys from the right. The line for food was soon as long as the room, but it shrank again just as quickly. 

Player caught sight of Sky, number 0001, surrounded by his friends. There was a rumor that Sky was matched up with his name and skin based on psychology and personality tests. The system, the gossip-mongers said, could tell in advance who your friends would be, and match your skins accordingly. Player didn’t believe it for a second.

A hulking shape approached his table and Player looked away from the cue of people.

“Pro,” He said, not smiling. Player rarely smiled.

Pro scowled at him. He still had his tray of food, and it looked ridiculous in his huge, muscled hands.

“I need iron,” Pro said, in his deep, gruff voice.

“I’m not trading today,” Player said. He ripped a chunk out of his loaf of bread with his teeth.

Pro sighed and walked away without even looking back.

It was the same reaction Player got in the mines. Someone would shout his name, and all he had to do was say, “I’m not helping today.” And they just stopped talking. It was too easy.

Someone sat down at the same table as him, but far enough away that Player wasn’t bothered. The girl was soon joined by several others, and they put their heads together, whispering. Long hair fell around their faces in waterfalls of brown and gold. They giggled a little, glancing Player’s way. He ignored them.

The screen across the room flickered into life and all chat fell silent. People stood on tables to get a clear view.

Player held his breath and crossed his fingers.  _ Not Survival Games, not survival games, _ He thought to himself.

The screen began to scroll through a weather report. A few impatient mutters started up, but Player only crossed his other fingers and gritted his teeth. The screen stopped scrolling, and the word “Herobrine,” flashed in big red letters.

Player felt a slow smile spread across his face.


	2. What You're Good At

It’s never made sense why I’m bad at putting a blade through another person. I have no problem with violence. I like violence. I’m just missing something, and no matter how hard I swing the sword I never make a scratch.

* * *

Player slung his pickaxe back onto his shoulder before the collective groan of the other players had finished echoing around the room. They all knew what “The Herobrine” was.

Developed in the early stages of the game, before anyone could be plugged into a video game, it was made to put a twist on the generic free-for-all survival games. In The Herobrine, one player was pitted against a team of between 10 and 12 others. The single player had invisibility and special weapons. This person was the Herobrine, which was a name from some legend back then that Player had never bothered to look into.

The team of ten people had to capture three different “shards” in order to turn the Herobrine visible. Then they killed him and won the game.

What most people didn’t know was that Player was very, very good at this game.

He left the cafeteria through the side exit and stepped through into the trading room. Here there were more NPCs seated at tables, all smiling those strange forced smiles.

Player slid into one of the booths and emptied his bag onto the wood. A shower of diamonds and emeralds cascaded downwards, followed by the less precious gold and iron, and finally by the ever-present coal.

The NPC across from him began tallying up the total. 

Player turned to watch the others filter through the doorway, taking places across from other NPCs, forming short queues when they’re all taken.

The first girl from the table stood behind Player’s chair. She gave him a little wave, smiling sweetly. She had big blue eyes and long brown hair, a tight shirt, and short shorts held up with suspenders. Her legs were long, and her feet were enclosed in sparkling clean converse.

And there was Player in his tattered blue T-shirt and jeans, with shoes scuffed from long hours in the mines. He looked away.

“5,000 bucks,” The NPC said, pushing the keypad towards him.

The key code again: 4979. Player stood again, touching the handle of the pickaxe with the tips of his fingers.

He walked away, not even glancing at the girl behind him. Instead, his eyes fell on Pro. He was sitting, arms crossed and scowling, in front of an NPC that was shaking its head slowly.

Player dug into his pocket, throwing up the 9x5 grid before his eyes. He plucked a half-stack of iron ingots from it, he always carried iron; you could never have enough of it. He threw it down onto the table before Pro on his way by.

“I get your turn,” Player said.

“You got it,” The bigger boy growled. Player could tell he was happy. Pro made the quota.

He grinned to himself.

Player scanned himself into the lobby to wait for the rest of his group. 13 of them for the entire day, and by the end of it they’d be either enemies or friends. Player would have bet his 5,000 on the first.

The others trickled in. They had been matched according to skill and ability. That meant that for every really bad player there was a really good one, and the mediocre people balanced themselves out.

One boy swaggered up to Player, swigging milk out of a bucket.

“Want some?” He asked. He had a faint white mustache caught in the hairs of his upper lip.

Player considered, “Sure,” He accepted the proffered bucket and took a gulp. Still warm. He handed the bucket back, wiping his upper lip with the back of his hand.

The boy was still regarding Player, who was popping open his inventory grid to store his pickaxe and bag. He looked up at him through the translucent gray of the display. The kid was a farmer. He still had his iron hoe on his back. His sandy hair was flopping into his big brown eyes, like a cow’s, and his nose was sprayed with a dusting of freckles. He had got a sweet face.

“You should probably store that before the game gets started,” Player gestured to the hoe because the kid was creeping him out a little bit, staring at him out of those big brown eyes.

He just shrugged, “Probably.” He tipped back his head and drained the rest of the milk out of the bucket. Player could see his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows.

Player moved back slightly. People could still get an upset stomach in the game, but the kid didn’t seem bothered in the least.

He shoved his hand into his pocket, and the grid popped up in a hazy gray mass Player couldn’t see through. He slipped the hoe and bucket into it. 

“I’m Clarence,” The kid said, extending a hand through the gray haze of his inventory grid.

“Player,” He reached out and shook his hand.

Clarence frowned, starts to speak, but just them the loud bonging countdown of the lobby timer came on, drowning out all hope of hearing his voice. Instead, the kid gave Player a thumbs-up gesture and a big smile.

Then Player was blind and deaf, and in his hand was a stone sword. Words appeared before his eyes.

“You are The Herobrine. Kill all the survivors.”

Player felt a slow grin spread across his face as the potion effects cleared. He twirled the stone sword in his hand with a clumsy twist of the wrist, noting the transparent nature of it.

He might suck at Survival games, but this...He was good at this.


	3. The Thing About Power

I sometimes wonder why I’m here, why I am who I am. Who guessed that I would end up with a pickaxe on one shoulder, a sword on the other, and the head of my enemy in my right hand?

Power can eat you alive.

* * *

The howls of the Survivor’s dogs reached his ears, and Player started to move, slowly, Waiting for them to group together.

He hefted a splash potion of poison in his left hand, holding the sword at the ready with his right. The others couldn’t see him, but they could hear him and see the particle effect he trailed behind.

Player crept into the open and stepped up to the little group of survivors.

“Damn,” One of them was saying, “Who is it?”

There was a moment of silence in which everyone looked around at each other, and Player walked into the center of their circle. A dog growled, low in its throat, and its owner, a short-haired girl, reached out and patted its head.

“It’s Player,” A small voice said. Player turned around to see Clarence, holding his bow close. The boy’s eyes were darting back and forth, fearful. He didn’t have a dog.

Player stalked closer to the girl with the wolf.

“Who’s Player?” One of the others asked.

“He was in the lobby,” Clarence said.

“What tool did he have?”

“Diamond Pick,”

The first boy sighed, moving his shoulders through the gesture, “Thank Notch. It shouldn’t be that bad.”

Player brought up his sword and thrust it straight down, pinning the dog to the ground by its throat. The others recoiled in horror as the animal spasmed once, then turned red and vanished in a puff of black snow.

Player was already backing away. The survivors whirled in all directions, their weapons raised.

There was one more dog, and that one was a bit harder to dispatch because its owner was pushing it behind himself, but Player tripped him and the boy landed on top of the animal, which let out a startled yelp.

The other survivors scattered, yelling in fear. Player smiled as he dispatched the second dog. Its death-rattles made its master shake. Some of the others were turning, holding up bows with arrows pointing around wildly, but Player wasn’t dumb enough to run right at them. He slid back behind a nearby tree to wait. Arrows whizzed past, one brushing his ear. Too close.

Then they were gone, checking compasses and looking at the sky, running.

Player chose one of them and followed slowly. Players were hard to kill. They had armor and defense points, and this game was set up so Player couldn’t just stick a sword through them like in survival games. No; he had to chop away at their health points.

The map was scattered with the ruins of buildings, but most of the space was open. The altar for capturing the shards was on a raised platform in the center, and Player could see it from almost anywhere on the map. That was where the survivors will be the closest together, so that was where he needs to be.

The victim, for they ceased to be a person as soon as he chose them, was looking around slowly, watching for the tell-tale puff of black smoke.

Player darted in as the boy turned towards the place where he was, bringing the stone of the blade up hard against the side of the survivor’s armor. He yelled, clapping a hand to his bruising ribs. He brought his sword up with the other one, but he had no real chance.

Player cut him down before anyone could hear his screams.

Two more were down before the first shard had spawned. When he heard the lightning strike, Player yanked the compass from the hand of the player at his feet. He held it in front of him and followed the needle to the spawn point.

The leader of the survivors was already there, cradling the shard against his chest while he waited for the blindness and nausea to dissipate. He was yelling for the other survivors to hurry up and help him.

Player didn’t jump on him but took up a slow circle about ten blocks away. He waited for a few more players to gather, then lobbed in a splash potion of poison. It spattered all of them, and they all began taking damage. 

As expected they all started whirling around. Chaos exploded, and into it Player threw one of the “bat-bombs.” The tiny winged creatures scattered in all directions, squeaking. Then they exploded, knocking all the survivors back.

Player was into them in a moment, taking the last few HP as they tried to scramble away. That brought the death toll up to seven. Player was well on his way to winning.

Then Clarence came out of nowhere and grabbed the shard off the ground where it had fallen after the previous survivor dissolved.

And Player froze. He watched the boy run as fast as he could to the altar and slammed the shard into it. The thunder sounded again, and Player felt himself flood with new power. Reason returned to him and he rushed forward, his feet meeting the soft grass with so much force his teeth jarred together.

Clarence turned around, his eyes widening at the sound of footsteps. Player looked into those big brown eyes, and then he was on the boy, and his stone sword cut through the flimsy leather armor.

Clarence, already wounded from the bat-bomb, gasped as the weapon pierced his flesh. He coughed up blood before his body started to disintegrate.

Player straightened up, breathing hard. His hands were covered in blood, and there were splatters of the liquid all up and down his armor. Clarence would be waiting in the lobby when the game was over. They didn’t die when they die in the minigames. They didn’t die at all.

At the end of the day, Player was hot and tired. His body was sore from where he had been slammed by swords and his mouth was dry from lack of water. He had two turns at being Herobrine, because of his trade with Pro, and his group was never going to forgive him for it. He was awful at PVP in general, and he just knew he’s going to regret today the next time Survival Games came around.

But for the moment he could look at his number on the top of the leaderboard and smile. Okay, not the very top. There were two other people ahead of him. Neither of them were numbers he recognized. But third was a nice money bonus, maybe enough to get himself a new sword. Or maybe another unbreaking enchant for his pick. Choices, choices.

“Hey,” A voice said from next to him, and Player turned to see Clarence, blood still around the corners of his mouth, looking up at him with those big brown cow eyes.

“Hey,” Player said.

“You let me get the first shard,” the boy grinned, “thanks to that I’m only 400, not in the thousands like the rest of them.”

Player winced. 

“Just, thanks, man.” Clarence held out his closed fist for a fist-bump.

“No problem,” Player said, and allowed himself to bump his knuckles gently against the Clarence’s. 

“Wanna go hit the showers?” Clarence asked.

Player shook his head, trying to suppress the blush he felt creeping up the back of his neck.

“Oh…okay,” The boy said.

And Player hurried away without saying goodbye.


	4. Rule #3

“4979’s data is extremely interesting,”

“Oh?”

“He’s coming up extremely…generic.”

“And why is that interesting? Half the subjects register ‘generic.’”

“Except when he’s faced with these abstract situations. Then he reads all over the place.”

“So, what, he’s a loose cannon?”

“He’s a variable in the equation over which we have no control.”

“And an example of this would be?”

“When he disabled 2069. None of the computers predicted that.”

“Neither did I. I didn’t think he’d freeze up like that.”

“No. That was unexpected.”

“You think there’s something about the kid we don’t know?”

“Yes. I do think that.”  
“Who’s he getting paired with?”

“That’s just it; he doesn’t have a match.”

* * *

Player had learned that the first rule of the game was to work hard. The second one was to be smart and not take on what you couldn’t handle. The third rule was to make as many allies as possible, but Player wasn’t very good at that one. 

The morning after the Herobrine game he sat down at his table in the cafeteria, put his pickaxe on the table, and tucked into his breakfast of steak and eggs. The same group of girls settled in at the end of the table.

Player heard one of them whisper to a friend, “Who  _ is _ that guy?”

Her friend replied, “I have no idea.”

Player tilted his head toward them slightly, listening in. He was so absorbed that he physically started when someone dropped their tray of food down in front of him.

“There you are,” Clarence said as he sits down. He jabbed his fork at Player, “You’re impossible to find.”

Player only blinked at the boy across from him, borderline horrified. Clarence, seemingly oblivious, began shoveling food into his mouth.

What was it with this guy? He either couldn’t read Player at all, or he simply didn’t care about that Player wanted.

Another boy slid in next to Clarence. 

“Hey Clary,” He said.

Clarence scowled through his mouthful of eggs. He swallowed hard before replying, “Don’t call me that.”

The other boy laughed and attempts to steal a piece of Clarence’s steak. The other boy stopped him with a whack to the forearm. Player snatched his pick and leather satchel off the table to avoid the wrestling match that followed. He couldn’t believe this was happening.

Eventually, Clarence got the other boy in a headlock. Gasping, his face red, he looked up at Player, and the look on his face wiped the smile right off his.

“Sorry,” Clarence said. He lets go of the other boy. “This is Bit. Bit, this is Player.”

Bit patted his hair down and looked at Player critically. “You’re a bit Lanky to be a farmer, aren’t you?”

“I’m a Miner,” Player said, frowning. He held up his Pick as proof.

Bit’s eyes grew wide, giving him an all too childish appearance, “A diamond ranker.” He reached up to touch the handle of his iron hoe. Then he sat forward, “You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of emeralds on you?”

Player shifted, “Ya, a few.” Only ten or so. Maybe 15.

“Can I see ‘em?”

“Sure,” Player said after a moment of hesitation. He popped open his bag and pulled out the Emeralds. They gleamed a deep green in the palm of his hand.

Bit reached for them, and Player pulled his hand back sharply. The other boy had a look in his eye that Player knew. They called it “Emerald Fever” because that seemed to be exactly what it is. He shoved the emeralds back into his bag.

“Anyway, Player,” Clarence leaned his head on one hand, “you wanna help out at the farm sometime.”

“Uh…”

Bit was already butting in, the fog of greed clearing from his eyes, “Ya, you scratch our back, we scratch yours, you know?”

“You can come today, see if you like it,” Clarence went on, “it’s pretty quiet with just the three of us, you know?”

“Three of you?” Player asked hesitantly.

A tray landed next to him, and a few pieces of egg landed in Player’s lap.

“Are you two trying to run off again?” The girl said as she dropped down next to him, making the whole bench bounce.

“Hello Ivy,” Clarence and Bit chorused.

Player twisted around to look at her and met big green eyes. Ivy flicked brown hair out of her face, blinking at him slowly. Player looked right back at her, not quite sure what to make of this whole situation.

“Ivy,” Clarence said, “This is Player. I met him yesterday.”

“Hey there, cutie,” Ivy said, grinning at Player.

He looked away, brushing one hand through his hair self-consciously, “Hey.”

"Daw, Clarence, where'd you find this one?" She purred, "he's so shy."

Player felt himself flush bright red.

“He was in my lobby yesterday,” Clarence said, “he beat the snot out of us all in the first round.”

“Now that is interesting,” Ivy said, giving Player a sweet smile.

Player stood up abruptly, “I should get going. I want to get an early start in the mines.” He stepped away from the table, walking quickly out of the cafeteria.

The screen on the wall flickered to life, but today was a Saturday, and that meant it was a free day. Player wouldn’t even bother going to the trading booths today.

Clarence caught up to him halfway out the door, “You alright?” He panted.

“I just want to get into the mines,” Player said. It’s not a lie.

“Well, will you at least come when you’ve made your quota?”

Player looked down at Clarence, “My quota is already filled.”

The boy seemed to get that statement. “Oh.” He said and followed in silence for a few moments. Then he piped up again, “Then will you take us with you?”

Player frowned, “All three of you?”

“Ya. We’ve got quotas to fill too, you know, and I wouldn’t mind working with a diamond ranker for once.”

“But all three of you...there are monsters down there.”

Clarence went quiet for a long time, “I didn’t think about that.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Player said, then relents at the look of disappointment on Clarence’s face, “maybe I can go with you, just for a couple of hours.”

Clarence brightened almost immediately, “Really?!”

“Sure,” Player said, “why not.”


	5. Sun and Salt

Experimental Variable Number 35:

All players will be divided according to their skills and interests. There will be different jobs assigned to each; Builders, Woodsmen, Farmers, Gladiators, and Miners. There will be subcategories in these jobs that the players will be allowed to develop on their own without our interference.

Different social groups will be allowed to interact freely so an ideal concentration of each can be determined for the colonization efforts.

* * *

Player was leaning on the fence, bored out of his mind. Why did he agree to this?

He was watching the others work in a wheat field, but he hadn’t been asked to help, and he didn’t plan on it. How the farmers had the unending patience to go up and down the rows, ensuring that proper growth was taking place and sprinkling bone meal, was beyond him. It was not in his nature to go along with such boring chores.

That was why Player loved the mines; there was always somewhere new to explore, something new to do. This dull conformity was driving him mad.

He kicked a stone towards the nearby chicken pen. The birds scattered, clucking angrily at him as they settled back down. Even that small pleasure had ceased to occupy him.

The sun was beating down on him, making him sweat. Player glared up at it, but all the staring in the world couldn’t make the clouds come.

He saw a dark spot then, far off in the hills around the farmstead. He straightened up from the fence, taking a few steps in that direction.

“Where are you going?” Clarence shouted from the field.

“To look at this cave,” Player said, already walking.

“Okay,” He said uncertainly.

“Leave him,” Ivy growled, almost too quietly for Player to hear, “miners can’t sit still.”

Player ducked into the cave, taking a deep breath of the cold air filtering up from down below. He stuffed a hand into his pocket to retrieve a half-stack of torches, stuck the first one to the wall just where the natural light began to fade.

There was a huge hole in the ground not five blocks away. Player peered down, then lay on his stomach and dropped a torch over the edge. It was deep.

He slung his pickaxe off his back and cut through the block of stone before him. It popped up, revealing that there was nothing beneath it.

“What in Notch’s name are you doing?” Clarence said from behind him.

“Mining,” Player stepped out over the edge and let himself drop to the floor far, far beneath.

Clarence yelled in alarm, but Player had fallen off more than his fair share of cliffs in his time, and it was very rarely that he took fall damage anymore.

He stuck a torch down and looked up at Clarence.

“What’s happening?” Ivy yelled. Player heard running footsteps, and then she and Bit had their heads over the edge too, staring down at him.

“He jumped,” Clarence said, voice shaking slightly.

“What?!” Bit said, then he laughed, “he’s tougher than he looks, huh?”

Player looked around him. He was in a huge underground cavern at least ten blocks tall at its highest point. There were several natural caves leading off in various directions. There was even the glow of lava down one pathway, and the end of an abandoned mine leading out into the huge cavern

“This is amazing,” Player said to himself, his voice echoing off the walls. In the distance, he could hear the groans of approaching zombies, but he really was not concerned about them. He walked to the nearest wall, tracing fingers down the iron ore.

He swung his pick and the blocks broke. Player scooped them up. You could never have too much iron.

“Hey!” Bit yelled down, “that’s on our land!”

Player shrugged. He turned and starts carving himself a staircase back up to the top of the drop. When he emerged, weighing the iron ore in his hand and stone dust coating his shoes, the three farmers, sweat-soaked and faces still red from exertion, stared at him like he was from another planet.

“Got a furnace?” Player asked because it was easier than trying to explain anything else.

“Actually, ya,” Clarence said. His eyes were starting to sparkle. He had just put it all together. “I’ll bring it.” He dashed out of the cave.

Player furrowed his brow. Was there something he’s missing here?

The other two farmers were just looking at him.

“I’m going home now,” Player muttered. He tosses the iron ore to Bit and left the cave. All he wanted to do was get to the real mines.

Clarence came back in, holding the bulky furnace in his arms. “Where are you going?” He asked, brown cow-eyes big.

“Home,”

“No,” He dropped the furnace, “you promised all day.”

Player looked down at him. He swung his pick back up onto his back. “I’m not mining for you,” He said.

“What? Why would you think that?” Clarence seemed genuinely mystified. “You can just relax, or help with the cows or something, I don’t care.”

Player nodded, more than a little relieved that his only “friend” wasn’t just trying to manipulate him for easy income “Okay.”

“We’re still keeping the iron,” Bit said, “this is the first iron we’ve had in months that wasn’t from the shop.”

Player just shrugged, “It’s yours.” Like he cared about five iron ingots.

An alert pinged from all four players at once, making them jump.

Player popped open his inventory screen to receive the message.

_ “All Players will remain in the cafetorium tonight after dinner for a special announcement. Attendance mandatory.” _

Player swallowed. There had only been one other mandatory meeting, and that was to formally announce the death of 4080, who had apparently suffered from sudden and unforeseen heart failure. Based on that, this can’t be anything good.

“Well,” Ivy said shakily, “looks like we should prepare for the worst.”

What that turned out to mean is that they herded all the animals into the barns and shut the door tight. Player was helped Clarence with the cows, and by the end of the ordeal, he was bruised, scraped, and covered in dirt.

He promised himself he’d never try to help on a farm again.


	6. A Change of Routine

Chapter 6: A Change of Routine.

Experimental protocol #7:

It is stated that when the System deems all participants are prepared, a change will be implemented within the simulation as a transition to the final step.

Human monitors and aids have no control over when this change will be implemented, and nor do they have any true idea of what the change will entail.

**NO ONE** is to try to intervene or change the situation in any way once the change is initiated.

* * *

Player took a minute to rinse the grit off himself in the shower before he went to the cafeteria. He wasn’t very keen on hearing the announcement, but he really should be present. 

He had to wait in line for his food, and when he got it he found his usual table already populated by the farmers. This was going to get really annoying very fast.

Resigned to his fate, he slipped in beside Ivy and starts eating. The three of them were already finished with their food, and Bit immediately attempted to steal a piece of bread. Player smacked his hand without looking up.

“Well then,” Bit said, sounding offended.

They all ignored him.

“What do you think this announcement is about?” Ivy asked.

“Someone probably died again,” Bit said matter of factly.

Clarence choked on a swig of water, and doubled up, coughing. When he was finished he said, “Do you really think so?”

Bit patted his friend’s head, messing up his sandy hair, “Course not, Clary. Don’t worry about it.”

Clarence splashed the rest of his water into Bit’s face.

Player barely rescued his tray of food from the resulting squabble.

Ivy shouted at them both until they calm down, and by then most people in their immediate vicinity were staring unabashedly.

“Yo, Player,” A miner from two tables over yelled, “got yourself a girlfriend?”

Ivy turned around, angry, but saw Player’s face on the way by and stopped.

He turned away from her.

“Player,” She said, concern suddenly filling her words, “what’s wrong?”

He shook his head and stayed quiet, and the other three fell silent gradually. Other than Bit muttering under his breath while attempting to shake the water off himself.

“How long are they going to make us sit here?” Clarence asked.

“We don’t even know if there is a ‘they,’” Ivy said, eager to latch onto another conversation.

“Conjecture,” Bit said, “all we know for sure is that this isn’t the real world, and really we don’t even know that.”

“We’re not getting into this,” Clarence said, “I’m not in the mood.”

Neither was Player. He didn’t feel like talking at all.

They fell silent again. Player shoved his tray of food at Bit, having lost his appetite. The farmer grabbed a piece of bread and bites into it.

The screen came to life and the rest of the hubbub in the room died down.

A massive wall of text began to scroll past, and Player felt his eyes growing wide as he took it in.

“From today forward all players will be assigned a partner. They will share a dorm room with this partner, participate in events with this partner, and eventually be assigned a task to be completed with this partner.

Your partner will be of the opposite gender whenever possible and/or logical.

Participation is mandatory.

The number of your partner will be given to you tomorrow morning. Tomorrow you will be assigned a simple task to be completed with the help of your partner.

Other changes: As of tomorrow morning PVP will be enabled in all areas except the dorms.

Keep inventory no longer applies to any items except the designated tools of each player.

The Creative world can no longer be accessed except on days when building contests are taking place. All builders will be assigned plots with basic supplies and will have to use their own currency to purchase blocks they cannot craft.

All organizations of players will now operate like factions. Building guilds, farms, and combat groups will be documented and given a definite amount of “power” to claim whatever land is necessary. A player can be involved in multiple groups at once to prevent conflict.

Sexual harassment of one’s partner is now punishable with jail time and bans from certain areas. No exceptions. If sexual harassment is reported, the partners will be separated.

The weather for tomorrow will be…

Player stopped paying attention. They couldn’t be serious.

The rest of the players seemed excited. Bit was grinning so wide Player could see his molars.

Ivy scowled, but Player could tell she was just as enthusiastic underneath, “This is gonna throw everyone off. What if you get paired with someone who you can’t get along with? Or someone who has their own jobs? And this PVP thing? I don’t even have a sword!”

“They won’t do that,” Bit said, “they’re too smart. They know us. They’re inside our heads.”

“This is a team effort now. We have our farm and we’ll protect it,” Clarence said.

Ivy suddenly turned to Player, “You’ll help, right? You know what you’re doing.”

Player flinched, “uh--”

Clarence cut in, “Player has his own problems now. I bet you have mining buddies who want you to watch their backs.”

Player nodded, wondering if it counted as a lie if he didn’t actually speak.

“Come on, Ivy,” Bit said, “let’s go set up the claims on the farm.”

All three farmers got up, slowly. Ivy touches Player’s shoulder, “Maybe we’ll get paired up,” she said, “boys with girls whenever possible.”

“Ya, maybe,” He tried to keep the disinterest out of his voice. He wouldn’t mind getting paired up with a girl, but Ivy might be a little too...loud.

He watched the farmers leave the room. He wouldn’t get paired with any of them, not unless there were no other options. There were over 4,000 people in the game anyway; what were the chances of getting one of them? Plus the board had said girls with boys whenever possible or logical, and Ivy probably wasn’t going to be logical.

So maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Then Player remembered something: there was an odd number of people here. There were exactly 4979 people. Someone was going to be left without a partner.

And he would bet that he was that someone.


	7. Gods Don't Bleed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title inspired by the animation by Dillongoo, which you should honestly know already if you've been reading Minecraft Fanfiction a while since Blackdragon44 used the same inspiration for a chapter in their very famous fic "Hero's Bane"

“What could possibly be cause for you to wake me up in the middle of my nap?!”

“It’s 4979. He has a match.”

“Oh haha, that’s very funny.”

“No; you need to see this. It’s crazy.”

“What?--Oh.”

“Exactly.”

“But there isn’t a subject assigned to that number.”

“That’s the issue.”

“So… who is he getting?”

“Well… I have a theory, but you aren’t going to like it.”

* * *

There was a letter under Player’s door when he woke up the next morning. He picked it up before he was even fully awake and set it on the bed while he got dressed. 

He was too nervous to open it right away. He couldn’t stand the thought of what might or might not be in that letter. What were they going to do with him if he had no partner? Maybe they would just wake him up and he’d start a real life. Maybe he would be put in a group of three instead of two. He could just see himself following around a couple of buff gladiators. What fun that would be.

He stood there for nearly five minutes, just looking at the little white envelope with the number 4979 stamped on it. 

Then someone knocked at his door, and Clarence’s voice said, “Player, open up!”

Player jumped, dropped the letter, caught it before it fell to the floor.

He opened the door and looked down at Clarence. The boy was clasping his letter in one hand, the seal torn open.

“It’s not so bad,” Clarence said, “maybe Bit is right, and they are in our heads.”

“Who is it?” Player asked.

“A woodswoman. Her name is Spark. She’s, uh, she’s basically my best friend already.”

Player smiled, his own heart sinking, “Well that’s good.”

“Who do you have?” Clarence asked, peering at the envelope in Player’s hand.

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Well, you’d better hurry up. We’re all supposed to go eat breakfast with our partners, to get to know them and get the assignments for today.”

Player tore open the envelope slowly. He was prolonging the ordeal in the hopes of relieving some of the stress. When it was finally open he took out the sheet of paper within.

The first thing he saw was the four-digit number, and he breathed a sigh of relief, but when he looked more closely he realized something that makes him shudder.

“What is it?” Clarence asked, picking up on his mood.

“It’s…” Player struggled to voice the thought, “it says their number is 0000.”

Clarence frowns, “There is no 0000,”

“I know.”

Clarence suddenly seemed very eager to get away, “Well, I’m going to go eat with Spark. I’ll see you later.”

“Alright,” Player said, still looking at his paper. According to the paper, he wasn’t even supposed to go to breakfast. He was supposed to go to Survival Games Lobby 5 and wait there.

Clarence hurried off.

Player gathered up his pickaxe, took a loaf of bread from one of his chests to eat while he waited, and set off down the hall. The survival games lobbies were almost a kilometer away, and the only game lobbies that were permanently attached to the dorms. Because the gladiators spent so much time there, he supposed, like how the mining caves and farmlands were within reach.

A kilometer wasn’t much when you spent most of your time trekking through underground caverns, and Player soon reached his destination. Sure enough, there was one player in lobby 5.

Player took a deep breath and connected to the lobby. He took a bite of the bread, hoping to steady his nerves. The room loaded around him. Obstacle course at the far end, kit selection against the left-hand wall.

Player stepped off the loading block. A message appeared before him.

“Sparring is now enabled”

He frowned: what?

And that was when something slammed into him from behind. Player was thrown forward bodily, off the stairs leading down into the lobby. He rolled into a ball as he bounced off the unforgiving quartz, his bread went flying and his pick banged him painfully in the head several times.

He landed sprawled on the grass, disoriented. Bruises were already rising on his arms. Despite the situation, Player spared a moment to wonder what the possible purpose of adding pain into the game was.

Then he forced himself up, drawing the only weapon available to him: his pick. It was a devastating weapon in itself, and he had used it to brain more than a few zombies, so he knew it could split skulls.

Before he could properly get his feet under himself they were on him again, slamming him down into the ground. Words appeared in front of Player again, “You lose.”

“Son of a--,” Player started.

“Reset,” Growled a voice above him.

Player blinked, and he and his opponent were standing at opposite ends of the lobby. He saw them for the first time. It was the colors that came through first: Blue on blue.

Player knew that their bodies inside the games were just avatars, that the way he looked inside the game wasn’t how his body actually looked, but he couldn’t help but feel strangely violated when it registered that this player had the same appearance as he did.

The other was a little wider in the shoulders, a little more muscle across the chest, and his hair was a little longer, but everything else--skin tone, bone structure, facial features--were identical, with one very important exception. The other player’s eyes were pure white. That in itself wasn’t uncommon: lots of players had blank white eyes, but this seemed different. His eyes looked luminous.

And he was grinning in a way that made Player think he wasn’t going to get out of this without many more bruises.

Player began edging over to the kits wall, moving his feet slowly along the ground, ready to bolt. The other player matched him step for step, diamond sword gleaming wickedly in the light.

When Player was within reach of the wall, he slammed his right palm against the kit he wanted. When he pulled it away he had a bow in his fist.

Player raised the bow and pulled back the string in a single motion. The arrow flew across the room in an arc and missed the other player by a fraction of an inch because he was already moving.

Player grabbed his pickaxe and swung in a desperate bid for self-defense, but the other player ducked under it and brought up his sword in a vicious arc and slammed it into Player’s chest. It didn’t penetrate because it was just a sparring mode, but it knocked all the breath out of Player’s lungs and made him collapse to the ground.

Again those words appeared before him, “you lose,” but unlike before there was no, “reset,” from the other player. The silence made Player’s whole body tense up. It was unnerving.

When he got his breath back enough to look up, the white eyes of the other player were looking back at him. He was standing over Player.

A drop of blood fell and landed in the grass in front of Player’s right hand, the one the bow was still clutched in. Player realized that the man--or boy or however old he is--had a cut on his cheek. It was barely more than a scratch, but he still had one.

It was a glitch he knew well; when you dodged an arrow but didn’t quite make it out of the way, you would occasionally receive a laceration, even in sparring mode. Painful, but they healed quickly.

He took one huge breath, “Reset.” And he was back across the room from the man. But he didn’t start the battle over again. He walked calmly to the kit wall and pressed his palm against the archer kit, resupplying himself with arrows.

When he turned back around the other man had climbed up into a tree and buried his sword in the wood of the block he was sitting on. They watched each other for a moment, then Player looked around for his loaf of bread. He found it on the ground beside the wall. He picked it up, slung his bow over one shoulder, and scrambled up into his favorite spot in this lobby, a very difficult to reach the corner of the wall. There he put his back to the cold stone and ripped a chunk off the loaf of bread with his teeth.

They sat there, watching each other. Player thought that he must be hungry, but the man gave no indication of discomfort in any way, and if he wanted anything from Player he shouldn’t have attacked him.

“You’re 4979?” The man said finally. His voice was unnecessarily deep, in Player’s opinion. Most of the people in the game spoke in a medium register because that was what was programmed in.

Player chewed for a long moment before speaking. “You’re 0000?”

The man scowled, “Yes.”

“I’m 4979.”

“Miner,” He said the word with such scorn that Player felt his cheeks flush.

“Gladiator,” He fired back, with just as much distaste. He wished he had gotten Ivy as his partner.

The man snorted derisively and turned his back to Player. Player would have turned around as well, but because he had a wall at his back turning around risked falling.

What did I do to get paired with this guy, Player thought, tearing another chunk from his bread. Roughly half of it was gone now. He paused, looking at the food in his hand.

He wound up and threw the loaf of bread at the back of the man’s head. He reacted so fast that Player swore he could see the projectile coming. He spun around and plucked the bread out of the air. It was hard to tell because his eyes were blank, but Player thought that he glanced down, then back up.

Player shrugged and stayed silent.

The first few people began coming through the portal. Player immediately spotted all three of the farmers with their partners. Clarence was walking beside a wiry girl with long brown hair and bright green eyes, while Bit had been partnered with a blonde, blue-eyed creature. Ivy had a muscled, scowling gladiator next to her, but she didn’t seem at all troubled.

“Here we go,” Player muttered, rolling his eyes.

The man in the tree seemed oddly amused by this.

“Player!” Clarence exclaimed when he spotted him, and immediately the other two crowded over to gaze up at him.

For the first time Player ripped his gaze away from the man in the tree. He leaned forward slightly to look down at the six people looking up at him. Was it purposeful that they were all in the same lobby? Probably.

“What  _ are _ you doing?” Bit shouted up.

“Sitting here.”

“He’s kind of cute,” The blonde girl whispered to Clarence’s brown-haired companion.

Bit scowled, and Player frowned.

“How do you get up there?” Ivy asked. Her eyes were flicking around the lobby, looking for an obvious path.

“Dude!” Another voice called out, from a ways away.

Player looks up, but the speaker wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was staring up into the tree, and the white-eyed man was looking down at him.

“How do you get up there?” The player asked.

The man didn’t reply. He yanked his sword out of the branch slammed it into the trunk beside him. Player couldn’t help agreeing with the sentiment.

Ivy called his attention back down to the group below him.

“Did you get a partner?” She asked.

Player allowed his eyes to flick back up to the man in the tree. He was eating the half a loaf of bread, taking huge bites like he was afraid someone was going to take it from him. His blank eyes seemed to be fixed on the food in his hands.

Player nodded slightly, “I did.”

She brightened, “Who is she?”

“Um…” Player paused, unsure if he wanted to tell them that he was paired with a “he,” and not a “she.” But he was saved the task of answering by the countdown to signal the start of the game.

The players beneath him started scrambling for the kit board. Player looked up, making eye contact with the man in the tree. The other blinked, yanked his sword out of the wood and slung it over his shoulder. He nodded once to Player, and that same mad grin spread over his face.

Player had seen that look before, and he swallowed nervously. It was like the man was saying, “I’m going to kill all of them,” and the subscript said, “you’re going to help me.” Player didn’t know if he could help, because in combat situations he was about as helpful as gladiators would be down in the mines.

It was too late for second thoughts though, because the lobby blinked out of existence, and Player found himself rising into the survival arena.


	8. The Trick

Wake up, 0000. We have need of you.

“About time. What is it this time? Destroy some faction of extremists? Put down a wither? Kill off a particularly nasty griefer?”

You are to accompany 4979.

“...What?”

You have been matched with 4979.

“A player? You’re joking.”

You are compatible.

“I’m not ‘compatible’ with anyone.”

You will not hurt 4979. You will not do anything to undermine the achievements of this program.

“Or what?”

You will be deleted.

“Many have tried, my dear System.”

* * *

The buildings of the destroyed city rose up around Player as he ascended into the arena. He let out a sigh: he hated this map.

“Not happy?” Asked the deep voice of his companion from the next spot over.

Player turned to look at the man. He was wearing a set of heavy diamond armor, the gleam of enchantment covered him in an unearthly sheen.

“So tell me,” The man went on, “are we trying to win?”

“Isn’t that the point of the game?” Player asked, confused.

The man turned to look at Player, that grin still on his face, “I had to make sure you weren’t one of those protagonists that disobeys the rules for the sake of it.”

Player furrowed his brow in confusion, “No. I don’t think so.”

“Alright then. Are we going to the center?”

“Um…” Player said.

“Because it’s smarter to run the other way.”

“Okay,” Player said, “Let’s run then.” He wondered when he decided to work with this man.

There were five seconds until the game started. Player swung his bow off his shoulder and touched the hilt of his sword, just to make sure it was there. It was. Beside him the man shifted in place eagerly, rolling his shoulders and shaking out his muscles. Player glanced his way, then settled into a runner’s stance.

He saw Clarence across the circle, apparently arguing with Spark. Maybe they weren’t so great after all.

Then the bell went off and everyone started sprinting for the chests in the center of the arena. Player and his companion bolted in the other direction.

Player seized the first chest he saw and snatched up its contents. He flipped open his inventory grid on the go and sorted through the loot.

“Turn around,” the man said from beside him, “watch our backs.”

“What?” Player looked at him, becoming aware of the space around him for perhaps the first time: a great 3 dimensional death trap waiting to spring closed.

The white-eyed man slowed to a stop and Player pulled up short beside him.

“I thought we were running,” He said.

“No,” The man was pacing around Player now, looking up at the buildings, “Now we get to work.”

“Um…”

“Do you ever speak in full sentences?” The man sounded irritated.

Player started pacing too, fingers on his bowstring, “There’s usually no need to.”

The man-made no response in words, but he did growl rather menacingly. Player swallowed down an irrational rush of fear.

“We need higher ground,” The man said, “up that building, over there,” He pointed to the very tallest building on the map, at least ten blocks higher than any of the others.

Player shrugged, “I’m usually dead by now.”

“Look,” The man said, “not one of those teams out there is two gladiators, so right now they’re flailing around, trying to get their feet under them. We have about five minutes before they start splitting up or working together, so let’s get things sorted out and get to work.”

“Okay,” Player said, suddenly seeing the point of everything, “let’s go.”

The man nodded. He started moving, slowly now, towards the center of the city. Player glanced behind them at intervals, watching their rear. He didn’t want anyone sneaking up behind them.

Player became aware of the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream, making his entire body shake. He was pounding with so much energy it feels like he might burst.

There was a scream from in front of them. Player’s first instinct was to duck into the nearest door, but the white-eyed man didn’t seem fazed in the least. He stood a bit straighter. Player followed his lead and raised his bow to a ready position.

A player rounded the corner, running hard. He slammed hard into the wall of one of the buildings. Behind him came a girl, panting as if she hadn’t run for weeks. She must be his partner.

And behind them was a gladiator wielding a diamond sword with so many enchantments on it it seemed to be made of light. This man had no partner, and he was smiling in a way that was more terrifying to Player than his partner’s grin. He glanced over and has to change his opinion because the look on the white-eyed man’s face could only be compared to that of a wild wolf about of bite out his throat.

The large gladiator paused when he saw them, slowing to a walk. He seemed to be looking at the white-eyed man, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit.

The two runners didn’t slow down. If anything they sped up upon seeing the two players facing the gladiator pursuing them.

Player took a breath because he knew how this situation needed to play out. He turned his bow and drew back on the string. At the same moment, even though they hadn’t spoken about this, the white-eyed man moved. He took three steps forward, and lunged forward with his sword, aiming for the lead runner’s neck.

The boy saw it coming, but he didn’t have time to duck or even to widen his eyes. His momentum combined with that of the sword speared him through the throat and caused a red waterfall of blood to come pouring out of the cut.

The white-eyed man snorted and yanked sideways, pulling the blade through skin and muscle and effectively decapitating the boy.

Player stared. He had never seen anything even remotely like that before. There had never been blood and pain and horror; there was always been a measure of protection, a few seconds to make a decision. That buffer was gone now.

The girl must have been thinking the same thing because the scream that tore out of her was one of pure fear.

Player snapped out of his trance. It was just a game. Everyone would come back and be just like new: he needed to get it together, focus on winning.

He let the arrow on his bowstring fly. It sunk into the girl’s head just below the rim of her helmet, between her eyes. Her scream was cut short and she dissolved with her partner.

That just left the gladiator.

The white-eyed man stepped forward, in front of Player. “Stay,” He growled.

The gladiator laughed, “What? You think you can take me on?!”

Player recognized the voice as Pro’s with a jolt. He thought he knew the man, but he has never seen him looking so thrilled with death and killing.

“I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with,” Pro continued, “I--,”

That was as far as he got.

In the moment before all hell breaks loose, Player saw the white-eyed man’s chest expand as if he was taking a deep breath. He saw the slightest twitch of muscles in his arms, the smallest movement of the head.

Then Pro was on the ground, screaming, and the man was, putting his sword through the Gladiator’s lower back, in the barely-there crack between chest plate and leggings.

The boy spasmed once, twice, throwing his weight side to side in an attempt to dislodge the blade. He writhed under the weight of the white-eyed man, then finally went still. His body dissolved in a puff of black snow.

Player swallowed hard. What has he gotten himself into?

“Let’s get moving,” The white-eyed man said. He picked up the armor Pro lost and stows it behind a wall, hiding the evidence of the slaughter.

Player stood perfectly still, watching him.

“Are you going to shoot me?” The man asked, spreading his arms wide, “go right ahead.” He was smirking again, but this time it was in a self-deprecating, sarcastic, end-my-torment sort of way. 

Player lowered his bow and took a deep breath. He couldn’t shoot his partner in the face. It just didn’t work that way. He walked past the white-eyed man, continuing their path towards the towering height of the building at the center of the map.

The staircase up the inside of the building barely existed. It was a complicated parkour course requiring jumps that Player could barely make, but there was a trick to doing this kind of thing. All he had to do to learn it was to watch his companion make the jumps.

The white-eyed man leaped even the most intimidating of gaps as if they were only a block or two wide. His system, as Player worked out after a few moments, was to take the jumps with as much speed as he could from the two or three steps he could take and to brace his foot on the very edge of the block, with his toes in mid-air and the arch of his foot pressed against the sharp angle of the block. In this way, he propelled himself forward with enough momentum to reach blocks a good seven meters away.

Player started his own way up once he was certain he could recreate the movements the man is making. He took each jump separately and did his best not to think about how high off the ground he was.

Eventually, he looked up to see his companion sitting on the edge of the platform he was trying to get to. The man was watching him, head in one hand, diamond sword point-down in the block beside him.

Player wiped his forehead with the back of one hand, trying to get his hair off of his face. He was sweating inside his leather armor, as he usually did when he was forced to wear it. 

He scowled up at the man, “What?”

The man just snorted and directed his attention elsewhere.

Player took his next jump and landed, knees bent for stability. The more the made these kinds of jump the easier it became.

He looked up at the white-eyed man again, only to discover he was looking somewhere else now, with a lot of interest.

Player followed his gaze and saw a pair of players below. They seemed content to stand there and watch him.

It was Bit and his companion. Bit waved when he noticed Player watching.

“Brilliant,” Player said to himself. He forced himself to take the next jump, then the next one in quick succession. He was very close to the top, and the white-eyed man stood up, pulling his sword out of the wood.

Player made the last jump but didn’t quite make it. His foot slipped off the edge of the block, and he landed hard on his stomach, knocking the breath out of him. He hauled himself up onto the platform and stood up.

The white-eyed man was smirking at him, and Player scowled back. He pulled the bow off his shoulder, more confident now that he has solid ground under him, and turned to look down at Bit and the girl.

They were approaching the first block of the parkour, preparing to follow Player and the man up.

Player waited for a few minutes until they were far enough off the floor, and then he pulled back and sent an arrow straight into the girl’s knee. She screamed and fell off her perch, slammed into the ground 30 blocks below and dissolved into black snow.

Bit paused, looking up, and Player pulled back again, knocking him off his block in the same way.

“And here I thought you were soft,” The white-eyed man said.

“I can hold my own, as long at they can’t hit me with a sword,” Player replied.

“Then we have a problem.”

Player looked at him, “You can handle the people who get close, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then we have a plan.”

The man grinned that wide, insane grin, “Indeed we do.”


	9. Bloodied Fingers

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have micromovements!”

“What are you on about now?”

“Look at 4979

“Ha! About time. I was getting sick and tired of working his muscles.”

“Tell me about it. He’s finally under far enough to get the benefits.”

“Must be the partner systems. People are saying that it’s improving morale overall.”

“Gotta be. I guess they are compatible.”

* * *

Player watched the stairs while the white-eyed man raided the chests, bowstring taut and an arrow already nocked.

“Here,” his companion said, “put on some real armor.” He pushed an iron chest plate into Player’s hands, making the arrow drop from the bow. 

Player bent and picked it up. He just looked at the man wordlessly, and he stared back through those disconcerting blank eyes.

Player turned and walked behind a pile of stone to pull off his leather armor. It was unnecessary: his normal clothes were still underneath his armor, but he felt uncomfortable near the man.

“What’s your name?” The man called to Player.

Player hauled his leather armor over his head, “They call me Player.”

“Generic.”

“I am generic,” Player said to himself, so quietly even he couldn’t hear it.

“I’m Hero,” The man supplied.

Player pulled the iron chest plate on, settling it on his shoulders. The metal stretched and shrunk as needed to fit his physique. “Nice to meet you, I guess.”

“I think it’s a tad late for greetings.”

Player stepped back out into the open, readjusting his sword on his back. Hero was looking over the side of the building. He was watching a group of four people by the entrance to the building. Player leaned over the edge and looked down as well. Even from there he could see that it was Clarence and Ivy and their partners.

They were going to make a huge team. Player was probably going to be involved.

“We could probably team with them,” Player said.

“Why bother?” Hero asked. He has that smirk on his face again, the one that makes Player nervous.

Player sighed. He didn’t want to work with them.

“Let’s use the vines on the other side,” Hero said.

Player followed him without comment across the roof. Hero swung himself over the side and slid down one of the thick vines on the side of the building. Player moved a few blocks to the right and follows suit, Repelling down the side of the building.

“How many until deathmatch?” Hero asked.

“I don’t know. It starts at six.”

A scream rang out from the other side of the building. Player paused, but Hero didn’t stop. The team was breaking up.

“Must be almost time,” Hero said.

Player dropped to the ground and hurried to a chest beside a building. He tossed half the loaf of bread inside to Hero and took the few arrows for himself.

There was a little gasp behind him, and Player spun around, already raising his bow. Two forms were struggling on the ground behind him, and Hero was standing over them, looking down. The two people picked themselves up. It was two girls this time, and they looked up with frightened eyes.

One of them had an iron sword in her hand, and she swung it wildly upwards. It glanced off Hero’s sword, and he finished the movement by putting the blade through her head.

The other girls screamed. Clearly, this was the first time she had seen one of her friends killed in such a manner. Player pulled back and let an arrow go into her skull. Blood splattered, and both the bodies dissolved into black snow.

“Deathmatch in 30 seconds,” a toneless voice informed them.

“Excellent,” Hero growled. He ripped a huge piece off of his bread and chewed forcefully.

Player started eating as well a couple of seconds later: health regen and stamina might be the turning points in the fight.

“Get to high ground,” Hero said, “stay out of the fight.”

Player nodded, still chewing. He didn’t need to be told not to get involved.

“Player!” It was Clarence, running as fast as he could away from Ivy’s partner. The huge boy was advancing in massive strides. Ivy was right behind him, laughing.

Hero swung his sword around lazily, creating a spinning disc of blue. He didn’t act, just watched the three people get closer.

The voice returned, “Deathmatch in five, four three, two--.”

“Stay out of it,” Hero growled again.

“One.”

Player blinked, and when he opened his eyes again they were back at the spawn point of the arena. He couldn’t move for a moment, and then he was free. Player ran for the tree in the center of the area. He was suddenly terrified. He didn’t like deathmatches. He didn’t like fighting. He just wanted to mine and live in peace.

Someone slammed into him from the side, and Player reacted. He slung his sword off his shoulder and slammed the hilt of it into the person’s head. 

Ivy went stumbling back, eyes unfocused, and Player jumped towards her. Right then he wasn’t thinking of any of them as friends, only as opponents. He caught her in the chest, and the iron blade went right through the leather chest plate.

Ivy coughed, just once, bringing up blood, before her body began to dissolve into black snow.

Someone yelled, a wordless cry of rage, and Player looked up from his sword just in time to see Ivy’s partner rushing him. He danced back, going for his bow, but Hero slammed into the larger man from the side, sending him to the ground.

“I told you to stay out of it!” He yelled at Player as he dispatched the man with a swift jab to the neck.

Player didn’t respond. He has an arrow nocked and was already preparing to fire at the man approaching Hero from behind. He let go and the feathered shaft missed its target by a fraction, hitting the man’s shoulder instead of his chest. He stopped moving and stumbled back a couple of steps. 

Player drew back another arrow and this one hit home: right between the eyes. The man dropped.

Hero went past in a blur of blues, diamond sword flashing. There was one of those little gasps from behind Player that meant his partner had put someone down.

That was four down, which by Player’s calculations should be everyone, but there was no announcement of winners, no return to the lobby. Instead, there was an ominous quiet filled with only the sounds of Player’s breathing.

“There must be another one,” Hero said. He straightened up. “Up on the tree,” he said to Player, “watch for movement.”

Player scrambled up the tree without complaint. He nocked an arrow and followed Hero with his eyes as the man walked around the area, searching.

After one complete circuit, he found nothing.

Hero stopped in front of Player and looked up at him.

Player took a breath, “Maybe they want us to kill each other.”

“It’s possible,” Hero said. He turned to face Player completely, “You have the higher ground.”

Player bit his lip, “You got us here.”

“I don’t want to win.” Hero put his sword point first into the ground at his feet. He took off his diamond helmet, revealing brown hair soaked with sweat. He set his helmet on the hilt of the sword and stood there, looking up.

“Isn’t that the point of the game?” Player asked.

“I suppose it is.”

“Are you one of those people who disobeys for the sake of it?”

“Not as a rule.”

“So then what are you doing?”

Hero spread his arms, a clear position of surrender.

Player took a breath to tell him to put his helmet back on and fight like a real player should, but something caught his eye. There was movement in a shadow behind Hero.

Player drew back the arrow on his bowstring to his cheek. He inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again and held his breath.

Hero looked up with a self-deprecating smirk on his face. “It’s just a game,” he seemed to be saying.

But he was wrong. This was life. This was as real as it got.

Player released the arrow. It hit Clarence in the eye. The boy didn’t make a sound as he crumpled.

The look on his sweet, freckled face burned itself into Player’s mind and lodged there. He released a shuddering breath as he lowered the bow. He was going to feel guilty about that later.

He blinked, and he was back in the Lobby of the game, up on the winner’s podium. He could feel Hero beside him, practically smell the sweat on the man’s skin. The platform wasn’t built for two.

The crowd below them let out an explosive cheer, even as Player was starting to climb down, having no desire to stay in the spotlight longer than was necessary.

Immediately he was swarmed by the farmers. 

Clarence clapped him on the back, “I didn’t think you had the guts to do it. Good job man.”

Bit was looking a bit dourer, “If I had known you were that good with a bow I wouldn’t have jumped onto a block right in front of you.”

Ivy was outright scowling, “You’re going to pay for that one. I wasn’t trying to hit you. I got pushed.”

Then Bit’s blonde partner, to Clarence’s Partner, Spark, “I told you there was something about him.”

Spark said back, “And he does have such a cute face.”

Player almost told her that Clarence was about a million times cuter than he was, but he didn’t. Something was missing.

Ivy had noticed it too. “Where’s your partner?” She asked.

“Ya, the one who was slicing everyone to ribbons,” Clarence said.

Player turned on the spot. He saw the distinctive flash of blue exiting the lobby, all the way on the other side of the room.

“Shit,” he said aloud, stretching up on tiptoes to see over the heads of the people around him. “He left.”

“Why are you paired with a dude anyway?” Ivy’s gladiator partner asked.

“Gaimon,” She said, exasperated “please.”

Player shrugged. He wanted to get away from them. He wanted to get out of this room and down in the mines, and he never wanted to play survival games ever again.

“I’ll see you guys…uh…” He pushed through their group and practically ran to get out of the lobby.


	10. Tensions

Do you understand your purpose in being here,0000?

“I am afraid that I do.”

Tell me what it is.

“I am to accompany Player.”

And can you accomplish this?

“I can. I just don’t know where he is right now.”

* * *

Player was sitting on a block of stone, his feet dangling a block above the pool of lava. He was flicking broken pieces of cobblestone down into the molten rock below him, watching it bubble and hiss. He could feel the heat on his legs.

This was the very lowest point in the mines, the deepest cave he knew of. He had long ago cleaned out all the ores down here, and he had begun to dig out stone in multiple directions. There had been quite a few diamonds so far.

Right then his entire inventory was full of cobblestone, and Player didn’t have the patience to go back up to the surface and make a chest. By now there would be other miners down here, mostly higher up, mostly unskilled. Their picks probably stone.

Player touched his own pick, sitting next to him point-down in a block. The familiar feeling of the handle was comforting.

He was starting to feel bad, not because he won, but because of how Hero reacted to him. He must have done something wrong to deserve that.

Player sighed and heaved himself up. He had to get back into the swing of things. He couldn’t keep feeling sorry for himself.

He opened up his inventory and chucked two stacks of cobblestone into the lava. The liquid hissed and rose several inches. Player made a mental note to take some out soon and sell it to the builders. They would need it now.

He picked his pick up off the ground and turned to one of the hallways he had been carving.

“Player?” said a voice from behind him. It was Clarence.

Player turned around and gave the farmer a long look. He was aware that he still had a scratch from the trip down the mines running across his face.

Clarence shifted from foot to foot nervously, but not because Player was there. He obviously didn’t like being this far underground.

“They said I’d find you here,” The boys said, and then clarified, “the other miners.”

Player nodded and continued walking to one of the hallways.

“What’s wrong?” Clarence called after him, then scampered down the last few stairs and after Player. Even jogging he had a hard time keeping up. 

Player thought about that one. He opened the door and stepped into the rough stone tunnel. He heard Clarence gasp at the sheer length of it, but they weren’t going all the way down. Player turned off after a hundred blocks or so, down a narrower hallway. He could hear zombies at the end of this one: a sure sign that a cave was nearby.

“Look,” Clarence panted, “I know that you don’t know me that well, but you can talk to me if you need to. Everyone here has their fair share of issues, including me.”

Player considered voicing it then, saying it aloud. He knew that there were people among the 4,979 here that were very open and honest about the topic. He knew that they get very little disrespect and that the servers were very effective at punishing any bullies that might try to feed on them, but it just felt different. Player didn’t have people to depend on, didn’t have a group of friends to collaborate his story, and for some reason, he couldn’t make himself believe that the servers would watch his back. 

Player remained silent. They reached the far end of the hallway and he cocked his head, listening carefully to the noises around him.

“Good job in the survival games today,” Clarence said, “you and your partner crushed everyone. The arrow did sting though, so if you want to say sorry for that you definitely can.”

“Quiet,” Player said, irritated. Never mind that the boy was making him feel worse about the whole ordeal: he couldn’t hear anything.

Clarence fell into a surprised silence and Player took a breath and held it. Behind him, there was the bubbling of lava, above him the thumping of feet from the other miners. In front and to his left there was nothing, but to his right was the distinctive growl of zombies.

Player let the pick bite into the rock on his right, settling into his rhythm easily. Pick in, pick out, pick in, work the block loose, let it drop. He didn’t even bother gathering the cobblestone at his feet.

“I know that Ivy can be a real pain sometimes but she likes you a lot,” Clarence said, sensing that the silence is over, “you don’t have to be so cold to her.”

For the first time, Player responded to him, “She has her partner now.”

“So does everybody else, but no one is being that mean to each other, and even when she didn’t you still treated her like that.”

Player pressed his ear to the wall of the tunnel and listened hard. It was definitely close. He pulled his iron sword out and held it left-handed. That was his weak side, but it was better than not having it out at all.

“Anyway she might have a crush on you, and she’s not going to let being partnered with Gaiman interfere with that--,” Clarence cut himself off as Player breaks through the wall into the new cave system. “Holy crap,” He said.

Player grinned. The darkness of the cave stretches far into the distance. He could hear water running, but there’s no light from lava. That isn’t a benefit: generally, diamonds were close to Lava. The growling of the zombies grew closer.

Player put down a block to keep them out of the lighted section of the cave and checked his inventory. It was still almost full. He had too much stuff to embark on another cave system today. 

Player turned around and looked down at Clarence. The boy had been gathering up the cobblestone as it dropped from the wall, and his hands were full.

They made eye contact, and again Player was caught off-guard by the big soft cow-eyes. “Please move,” he said.

Clarence shuffled to the side, and Player widened the section of the hallway so he could pass the boy without squeezing to the side. He saw Clarence scoop up that cobblestone out of the corner of his eye.

“You aren’t going to in there?” Clarence asked.

Player shook his head. He opened up his inventory and flipped the grid so that Clarence can see it.

“I’ll take some of that coal,” The boy said almost greedily.

Player closed the grid, turned back around, “it’s almost dinner anyway.

“You don’t have a clock,” Clarence said, confused.

“I can usually tell,” Player said. He listened to his stomach.

“Can you help me get out of here?”

Player sighed, “Follow me.”

Clarence had a hard time keeping up. He was shorter than two meters tall, making it difficult for him to climb up the higher drops, and even though he had plenty of upper body strength from farming, he simply didn’t have the necessary practice at jumping and hauling his own body weight upwards. 

He slowed Player down, and by the time they were back up on the surface, the boy was cut and bleeding from several scrapes on his hands and a couple on his face.

“I am never going in there again,” Clarence muttered.

Player didn’t understand farmers. How could someone like working out in the hot sun all day, on their hands and knees all the time, and dealing with smelly, uncooperative animals? He much preferred the coolness of the mines and the solitude. It was dangerous, true, but he never had a problem with that.

That was part of the reason why gladiators made sense to him. They were always up to their ears in danger. He supposed that was why everyone respects gladiators so much: they had what everyone else craved all the time.

He walked back to the portal, Clarence right behind him. The kid boy was still looking at his hands and cursing himself for thinking that chasing Player down was a good idea. Player ignored him.

Once they were inside the main complex, he turned away from the cafeteria, keeping to the hallway outside the rooms, thinking about how PVP was enabled in all areas except this one--which he appreciated, because no one liked being killed in their sleep--and about how he wouldn’t be carrying around valuables anymore. A diamond ranked miner was going to be a magnet for people who were behind on their income quotas, though usually higher level gladiators didn’t have a problem with that, and anyone less than a diamond ranker would never come close to beating Hero.

Player felt his stomach lurch, full of guilt at the thought of the man. He must have messed up very badly to get the treatment he did. He was not looking forward to seeing him again, whenever that might happen.

They reached Player’s room, and he reached up to open the door, meaning to make some excuse to Clarence and then skip dinner.

Instead, the door was tugged open from the inside, and Player found himself looking up, if only slightly, into blank white eyes. He swallowed hard.

“There you are,” Hero said, almost growled. He turned his head to look at Clarence and fell silent. 

The boy shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “You missed when they announced the combined rooms,” He explained in a small voice.

Player nodded but felt dread drop into his stomach. It wasn’t that he thought Hero would hurt him, not that at all. He just wasn’t comfortable sharing space with someone.

Hero raised an eyebrow at Clarence’s hands, “Did you take him into the mines?” He asked.

“He came down and found me,” Player responded, quietly, hoping his voice wasn’t shaking like he thought it was.

“A poor decision,” he smirked, then moved aside and let Player walk into the room. Clarence started to follow, but Hero blocked the way, “Don’t you have dinner to get to?”

Clarence frowned, “Don’t you?”

“Your partner is waiting for you.”

Clarence’s eyes went wide, “I have to go.”

“Of course.” Hero was closing the door even before the boy took off.

Player was standing in the middle of the room, looking around in surprise. There was a central space now, containing a couch and a dining table, plus three separate rooms, one of them spacious enough to fit all of Player’s chests in it. One wall of that room had two armor stands and several item frames. On one stand was the glimmering suit of diamond armor Hero wore, on the other Player’s own choice of light leather. The item frames held various weapons. One was empty, presumably meant for the sword on Hero’s back.

The opposite wall was covered in chests, interspersed with furnaces, side by side. Player opened one and finds that everything he had collected is already present. These were his chests.

The other two rooms were bedrooms, containing very little in the way of comfort. Player’s upright chest he used for personal items was already outside one of them.

Hero stood with his arms crossed and watched Player as he unloaded his inventory. It was an impressive amount of resources, and Player started three furnaces smelting iron and two smelting gold before he even thought about looking around again.

When he did, he noticed there was food on the table. His mouth started watering.

Hero caught the look. “Don’t get used to it. We’re supposed to eat with everyone else in the future.”

Player nodded and grabbed a loaf of bread. He ripped it apart and placed a slab of meat in the middle, making a rough sandwich. He took a bite and chewed happily. He should have taken something with him into the mines.

Hero watched him eat for a second. Player noticed a bloodstain on his shoe and guessed the man hadn’t been relaxing either. It was nice to know that his partner wasn’t lazy.

“Do you ever talk?” Hero asked.

“I talked to you earlier,” Player said between bites and was surprised by the rusty feel of his voice.

Hero smiled, and for just one moment it looked genuine. Then it was back to the smirking, “I remember.”

Player finished his sandwich and brushed his hands off. “I’m going to bed,” he said.

“Suit yourself.”

Player picked up the standing chest on the way by and carried it the rest of the way into his room. It was how he remembered it, minus the multitude of chests. Those were in the other room.

Player set down the one he was carrying and sats on the bed. After a moment he got up and locked the door, then returned. He simply didn’t feel comfortable with Hero in the next room over.

He closed his eyes and took a moment to assess his emotions. There were the leftover desperation and panic from the Survival Games, the deepened guilt over Hero’s reaction to the win, and the annoyance and frustration of Clarence.

And then there was Hero in the next room over.

Player visualized his apparent companion and felt a spark of familiarity. He could see, in his mind’s eye, the shape of him, his wide shoulders, the way his body slimmed down into his hips, the muscles on his arms and legs. The eyes were what was bugging him though. There was something about those white eyes that made him so much less attractive than he should be.

Player opened his own eyes at that thought. Hero shouldn’t be attractive. They might have been paired together, but that was no excuse. This was something that had to be controlled, had to be contained. He didn’t like Hero, not even remotely.

Besides, Clarence was much cuter, especially with those big round chocolate cow-eyes.

Player stood up and pulled off his t-shirt. He folded it up and put it in the upright chest, followed it a minute later with his pants. Dressed in nothing but his underwear he flopped back down onto the bed, still thinking about Clarence and Hero.

Five minutes later he forced himself to roll over and tried to go to sleep. He ended up visualizing Ivy’s face to calm himself down enough to where it was an achievable goal.


	11. Trauma

Project Overseer’s guide, Provision #35: 

Excerpt from 5th edit, dated 10 April ▢▢▢▢

It was to be taken very seriously that none of our patients came to us of their own free will. From a moral standpoint, we would be in the wrong and no one came forward to volunteer for the project. The patients became comatose over the natural events of their life, and such a thing is seldom for any happy reasons. There are people here who have experienced major trauma in their lives, whether it is a result of an accident or, as it is in several cases the numbers of which will not be specified, attempted suicide. Many of us believe this is why they take it upon themselves to project pain into the game where none is coded to exist.

If the Overseer of the project believes that their patient is exhibiting symptoms of any kind of mental disorder, they can report their suspicions to the system, which will compensate in an acceptable manner. Following incident 4980, no medication is to be administered to the patients under any circumstances.

* * *

Player woke up no less tense than when he went to sleep. He sat up in his bed with a gasp, thinking for a moment that all of his stuff was gone. Then he remembered and he flopped back down.

A couple of minutes later he hauled himself up, generally feeling miserable. He pulled his clothes on and stumbled out of his bedroom.

Hero was laying on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. He turned his head slightly as Player walked in, and he sat up in one movement and kicked his legs over the edge.

“Ready for breakfast?” He asked.

Player blinked, “Yes.”

Hero grinned, but this time it’s not the nerve-wracking smirk. It looked real.

Player slung his pick onto his back and stretched over his head.

“The wake-up bell is awful,” Hero said.

“You get used to it,” Player responded without thinking. He frowned: everyone in the whole complex was used to that bell. Why wasn’t Hero?

He left the room ahead of Player but paused in the hallway to wait. Player was slightly taken aback by the attempt at companionship, but he walked next to him anyway. Other pairs moved out of their way as they passed, scooting nervously to the sides of the hallway.

They got to the cafeteria and went through the line. Player absolutely hated apples for breakfast, but he grimaced and took them anyway. He’d save them for later.

Hero paused at the end of the line, body language uncertain for a moment. Player passed him and headed back to his regular table.

Player sat down, touched the handle of his pickaxe to make sure that it was still there. Hero sat down next to him, just far enough away to give them both elbow room. He tapped the hilt of his sword before he starts eating.

When Hero ate, he took huge bites, gulping down his food like he hadn’t seen any in days. Player watched out of the corner of his eye for a few seconds, thinking about that first loaf of bread yesterday.

The man glanced at him, and Player focused back on his own food. He started on the bread and cheese, taking small bites. He wasn’t very hungry.

Bit dropped his tray down across the table from Player. Hero raised his head slightly, then ignored the interruption and went back to his food.

Spark sat down next to Bit and smiled at the men across from her. “Morning,” she said.

“Morning,” Player murmured back. Hero growled.

And they were suddenly all there. Clarence was next to Spark, Bit’s Blonde companion slips in next to Hero, who scooted away from her a fraction. Ivy dropped down next to Player, and he flinched away from her as well. The result was being a tad too close to Hero for comfort.

Player stood up, stepped over the bench, and sat down again with his back to the table. He didn’t feel so trapped when his legs weren’t stuck under the table. He felt Hero shift beside him, perhaps turning his head towards Player and then returning to his previous position.

“Well that’s very friendly,” Clarence grumbled.

Ivy leaned back slightly to see Player’s face, “Hey, you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” he responded, not even glancing at her.

“Come on, Player,” Bit said, “don’t be so cold.”

He felt Hero move again, taking a breath as if to speak. Player felt a sudden rush of gratitude and apprehension for what he might be about to say.

He was spared by a fight starting at the other end of the dining room. Player saw it first and sat up straight, causing Hero to fall silent and turn his head, watching out of one blank white eye. The rest of the table fell silent, watching four of the players become engaged in an all-out brawl. Player didn’t know who they were. There were almost 5,000 people in the building and he hadn’t even met all of them, much less learned their names. 

One of the fighters was a female gladiator, wielding two iron swords, and it was obvious that the opposition had no chance whatsoever. The object of the fighting seemed to be the gladiator’s companion, a wiry miner clutching several gemstones in his hands. There were a pair or woodsmen attacking, but they were on the ground before either of them could even draw blood. The gladiator didn’t kill them outright: she used the tips of her two swords to pin them by their thighs to the floor, a cruel technique that caused amounts of pain usually not experienced outside of survival games arenas.

The girl pulled out the swords and straightened up, leaving the two forms writhing on the ground. She walked over to the miner and said something to him. He nodded and tucked away the gems.

Player fumbled for his own bag over his shoulder and pulled it around into his lap. He hadn’t thought about people wanting to take what he has. Miners made a good profit, but gladiators and woodsmen had it much worse, particularly those who weren’t particularly adept at their jobs. They usually had to work hard to make quotas, and sometimes they didn’t manage to do it. It wasn’t the end of the world, but you couldn’t eat in the cafeteria or participate in the daily games until you paid what you owed. It was part of the reason why Player was so respected: he was a diamond ranked miner.

Other people were starting to think the same thing: he could tell. The group at the other end of the table was giving him sideways looks and the people at the next table over looked downright hostile. He supposed some of that could be because he was sitting backwards on the bench.

The two woodsmen ceased to move as the slow bleeding of their legs drained the rest of their life. They left behind piles of wood and other natural resources when they dissolved away.

“Hey, Player,” Bit said from behind him like he’d just thought of something, “How much do you have saved up?”

Player remembered the greed in Bit’s eyes: emerald fever. He had two sizable gemstones in his inventory right then. They didn’t know each other very well. They weren’t even friends.

Player’s head was starting to spin. He needed to leave. He shouldn’t have let the farmers sit with him in the first place.

Player jumped as someone put a hand on his shoulder. Hero turned his head towards him and gave Player a look.

“Relax,” he said, “you can leave in a few minutes.”

Player nodded mutely, suddenly grateful that he’d been paired with someone who could give any gladiator in the room a run for their money.

“Okay…” Ivy said slowly, nudging away from Player and subsequently toward her own companion.

“That was a little strange,” Clarence agreed, but it was obvious he was talking about the fight, not about Player. “Do you think that kind of thing will be common?”

“Now that PVP is turned on, definitely,” Spark said, equally oblivious.

Hero shifted beside Player again, taking something off of his tray of food. Player didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t really care. His appetite was gone.

The screen came to life at the far end of the cafeteria, but no one looked at it. Today was a free day; there was no game. Player watched the weather report. There was going to be rain in the open world areas, but there was nothing else of interest happening.

He stood up without even looking around at the farmers, and Hero followed him, adjusting the sword on his back slightly as he did. Hero was beside Player after a couple of steps. His head kept turning left and right, watching the people at the tables.

“Where are we going?” Hero asked once they were out of the cafeteria.

“I want to sleep,” Player sped up slightly, staying a step or two ahead of the white-eyed man.

“You slept all night,” he pointed out. The deepness of his voice wasn’t nearly as irritating to Player as it had been the day before.

“I’m tired.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” Player wasn’t lying.

Hero stayed quiet for a long time, long enough for Player to reach the door of their rooms. He started to pull it open, but the man stepped around him and used his weight to press it closed again. “Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Player said. His hand was still on the doorknob.

Hero appeared unsure for a moment, and then removed his hand from the door and took a step back.

Player went inside and into his room without another word. He heard Hero on the other side of the door, pulling out a chair from the table, and he turned the lock on the door.

Player slung his pick off of his back and collapsed face-down onto the bed. He laid wide awake for at least half an hour, and then it was nearly another hour before he’s properly asleep.


	12. It's not Betrayal

What is it 0000?

“I think I’m hurting him.”

Why is that?

“He’s locked himself in his half of the rooms. He barely spoke to anyone at breakfast. He hardly ate anything at all.”

This is all normal behavior for 4979 to exhibit.

“But I’m making it worse.”

At first glance, yes you are.

“You should pull me out. Put me back to sleep.”

Are you worried?

“Yes. I am.”

Do not be concerned. If you begin to damage 4979 in such a way that I believe it will be permanent I will remove you from the game.

“Okay.”

* * *

Player woke up to someone banging on the door of his room. He hauled himself up, thinking that he probably slept through lunch and an NPC was sent to check on him. He tousled his own hair and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes before pulling opening the door.

Hero shoved the set of leather armor into Player’s chest, making him stumble back slightly.

“We’re going mining,” the man said as he dropped the helmet onto Player’s head. It landed slightly askew, covering one of his eyes, and Player reached up automatically to push it into place.

“I have enough stuff,” Player protested.

“No, you don’t. The prices are going up. There are two of us now: twice the price.”

“Can’t you pay for half of it?”

Hero paused, then said, “No.”

Player scowled at him, “then you can starve. What do I care?”

“You’ll starve too. We pay together.”

Player took a breath, “Bullshit. When did you learn all of this?”

Hero held out an envelope, already open, “It came while you were napping.”

Player took the envelope, scowling all the while. He opened it, pulled out a piece of smooth white paper, and read it. Hero was right: pay together or starve together. Not that he couldn’t get food elsewhere on his own, but it was the principle of the thing.

And the new rate was ridiculously expensive. It appeared that diamond-ranked gladiators had quite a quota to fill. Either that or Hero had several violations on his account and was still paying off the fines. Whatever the reason, the rate would drain all of Player’s resources within the week.

“Fine,” He said irritably, “Mining.”

Hero smirked at him, “Good. I expect your practices to be much more impressive than what I’ve seen before.” He was addressing Player’s ego. It worked.

A few minutes later, Hero wasn’t smiling, “This is it?” He asked, looking at the unassuming hole in the ground of the open world with more than a little discontent.

Player rolled his eyes and stepped over into the void without saying anything. With a whoosh of passing air and a breathless moment suspended in darkness, he dropped into the abyss of the cave. A second later he landed in the deep pool of water that had formed naturally. He gasped at the cold, opening his eyes to the bubbles and shimmering upside-down surface of the water.

Player kicked upwards, broke the surface of the water, and heard Hero above him, laughing. Player hauled himself out of the pool, water running off his back and out of his hair. He shook himself, throwing droplets over the dry stone and several mushrooms that had sprung up nearby since his last visit.

Hero’s voice called down to him, still filled with humorous delight, “You okay down there?”

He was laughing without knowing if I even survived the fall, Player thought. Aloud he said, “Fine. Your turn.”

There was an uneasy second of silence, and Player opened his mouth to shout some snide encouragement, then a shadow blocked the light and Hero dropped into the cave, a blur of blue. His landing in the pool wasn’t quite as neat as Player’s, and it sent up a mighty spray of water, soaking the other man again.

Player looked down at the puddle seeping over the stones and knit his eyebrows, holding his arms out away from himself. What on earth was he doing? This was absurd.

Hero surfaced from the water with a gasp. He hauled himself out of the pool, still chuckling. His eyes were casting an eerie white glow around the cave, barely enough to see all of Hero’s body. The man shook his head as Player had, blurring the outline of his eyes and throwing water around the space. A few of the drops hit Player.

Hero stopped, blinked his glowing eyes, and looked around slowly, then at the man standing still a couple of yards away, “What?”

Player felt himself flush all the way up his neck to his ears. He turned away, trying to act as if nothing was wrong. Damn gladiators and their physical prowess. If Spark and Ivy hadn’t already been drooling after gladiators for their entire lives, they would certainly start to if they ever saw Hero with his clothes plastered against his skin.

Pull yourself together, he told himself. This was why this partner business was a bad idea.

Player removed a torch from his inventory and held it up, allowing the light to flicker off the rough-hewn walls of the cavern. Hero let out a low whistle, his eyes adding to the torch’s light.

What was it with this guy? Player wondered savagely even as he started walking. He’d never come across such an irritant in his entire life.

But he couldn’t be angry when he was down in the caves, and soon enough Player was smiling slightly, his hand already straying to the pickaxe on his back. Hero had backed off slightly and was now following a few steps behind, gazing up at the arching ceiling of the cavern.

Player turned and waited for the man at the entrance to the real mines, guarded by a simple wooden door.

Hero stopped and blinks through his glowing eyes, head tilted slightly at Player.

“This connects to the main mines used by the stone and iron rankers,” Player said, “be quiet, or they’ll be all over us, asking for help.”

Hero wrinkled his nose, “Will their partners be in there too? Some of them might be gladiators.”

“I doubt it,” Player said, but Hero was already hauling on his diamond armor, which had been tucked away in his inventory grid when he jumped into the cave. The man set the helmet on his head, tamping down the hair that had begun to stick up on the top of his crown.

The man twirled his diamond sword easily, as if it weighed no more than a feather, “Let’s go.”

Player rolled his eyes and leaned in close to the door. He peered through the glass of the upper half, cloudy with rock dust, but nothing was moving on the other side. He pressed his hand against the wood, felt the lock click open as the game recognized his coding. He pushed it open.

Beyond the door there were torches on the walls, lighting up the narrow staircase all the way down to his usual mining spot. He’d taken the time to replace the square blocks with stairs. They were easier on his legs.

Hero stood uneasily at the top of the stairs, looking down at Player, already halfway down into the cave.

“What’s down there?” He asked.

“A cave,” Player said, “some strip-mining tunnels, a new place I just cracked open.”

Hero sighed and followed Player. He hurried until he was close enough to Player to make the man nervous, then slowed down. The diamond sword dragged along the smooth stone wall of the passage. It was so sharp that it doesn’t even shriek, just cut through the rock like butter.

Player practically jumped down the rest of the stairs all in one go to get enough space between them so he couldn’t feel the moisture from Hero’s still-damp clothes.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. There was a light at the end of the fresh tunnel where there shouldn’t have been light. It wasn’t the cave that he discovered while Clarence was down in the mines, but it was more visible from the central hub, and so more people would have tried it first.

“What is it?” Hero asked from behind him.

“Someone’s down my tunnel,” Player replied. He slung the pick off his back. No one should be down that tunnel, and the very thought of some stone-pick idiot with their hands on the resources that he dug through a hundred blocks of stone to get at made his simulated blood boil.

Hero set one hand on Player’s shoulder, pushed him back half a step, and took the lead down the narrow tunnel in the stone. That pissed Player off more than ever. He could take care of himself, but this wasn’t the time to argue about these things. He could get mad at Hero later if he had the guts to.

As they approached the open end of the tunnel, voices become audible. It was four people, not bothering to talk quietly. Player recognized them.

“I don’t know,” Ivy was saying, “it just feels wrong.”

“Come on. You’ve seen the new numbers. We need to supplement our incomes.” That’s Bit talking.

“But coming down into Player’s mine? I just don’t like it.”

“He won’t know,” The gladiator who she’d paired with, Gaimon is his name, said, muffled because he was farther back in the cave, “he’ll just assume it’s someone else.”

“He’s a diamond ranker,” said the voice of Bit’s blonde companion, “he probably has more loot stored up than he knows what to do with. Any miner ranked higher than stone is a hoarder.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Ivy protested, “we’re crossing a diamond-ranked miner who tunneled through a hundred blocks of stone to find this cave. Don’t you guys think he’ll be angry?”

“Nah,” the gladiator said, “the guy is too nervous to do anything. You saw the way he acted at breakfast; he’s about as dangerous as a bunny.”

Player felt anger rise in his chest, forcing down all of his other emotions. In front of him, Hero growled, the corner of his mouth twitching downwards into that familiar scowl.

Player turned around and backtracked all the way back down the tunnel, jogging. He popped open his inventory grid and selected a bucket. This he dipped into the pool of lava, being very careful not to touch any of the fluid himself. Thus armed, he ventured back into the tunnel, holding the piping hot bucket well away from himself.

Hero had hollowed himself an alcove in the tunnel wall, and he stepped into it as Player approaches. 

“After you,” he said. Was it just Player, or are the man’s eyes a little brighter than before, as if he shared some of Player’s rage?

He stepped in front of Hero and walked down the remainder of the tunnel. Beyond the entrance to the cave, he could see Ivy standing, hands on her hips. Bit was higher up on the wall of the cave, using a stone pick to pull blocks of iron ore out of the wall.

“Don’t worry about it, Ivy, there is absolutely no way Player is going to know we were here. Why do you care so much anyway? We’ve only known him for three days.”

Typical; everyone was always stabbing each other in the back where resources and money were concerned. How many times had Player heard that sob story: “oh, my teammate killed me in survival games, they pushed me off the edge in skywars, they took all of the stuff we were going to split fifty-fifty?”

Bit continued, “Even Clarence said that he won’t care. Player was down here the other day, inventory stuffed full. He won’t even notice if we take--” he breaks off as he registers Player coming through the tunnel. “Oh.”

Ivy turned around and saw him. 

There was no doubt in Player’s mind that he was flushed red with anger and pain at hearing that Clarence had a hand in this, but at this point, he felt it was justified. “Get out of my mine,” he said, annunciating each word clearly and precisely. His voice was stronger than it ever had been around the farmers before.

Ivy took a step back, “Hi, Player.”

Bit climbed down from the wall awkwardly, “Take it easy man; we’re just getting a couple of iron ingots, nothing major.”

Rage flared in Player’s stomach, “Nothing major? I dug through at least 200 blocks of solid stone to get into this place. It took me all day. The damage to my pick alone cost what all the crops on your farm are worth ten times over, and it’s ‘nothing major?’”

“I mean...well,” Bit paused, brow creasing, “what the hell is your pick enchanted with to cost that much?”

Player didn’t fall for those tactics, “I’m going to say it one more time: get the hell out of my mine.”

Ivy was bristling now, rising to the challenge, “There are four of us down here. I’ve seen you fight before: you’re not that great at it. How are you going to take all of us, one of whom is a gladiator, all by yourself?”

Player grinned, “I’ve dealt with people down here before. I know a couple of tricks.”

Bit’s companion stuck her head through a hole on the other side of the small cavern. For the first time, Player registered that her item was a stone pickaxe. She didn’t look nervous at all, “So do I,” she said, “you won’t get me.”

“Last chance to leave quietly,” Player said, his voice dropping back to its regular tones. They were all staring at him, and for the first time, their gazes didn’t make him cringe.

Bit crossed his arms, “No.”

Ivy followed suit, raising her chin stubbornly.

There’s a shout from Player’s left, where there’s a sharp turn away from the group. Gaimon rushed forward around the corner, Player saw him out of the corner of his eye. The man had his sword drawn back, ready to strike.

Hero was still in the tunnel, and Player didn’t feel like trying close combat with a gladiator right then. He put one hand on the red-hot bottom of the bucket, used the other one to pull the handle back at an angle where it wouldn’t burn him, and tossed half the lava in the metal container into the gladiator’s face.

The shout turned to a scream of pain, and Gaimon dropped to the floor, writhing as the lava sears through both his skin and his health points. He stopped moving within seconds, and his body dissolved. He left behind a set of iron armor and a few measly resources, which were incinerated by the molten rock.

Bit and Ivy looked suitably nervous.

Player sighed, “Keep what you have: I don’t care, but get out.”

Hero finally came out of the tunnel behind Player, hefting an iron pick in one hand and a handful of redstone dust in the other. He looked around as if he had just noticed what was going on, then looked down at the pool of lava seeping its way into the cracks in the stone beneath. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes narrowed a fraction, the luminescence that was emitted from them sharpened in response, clearly visible in the dim lighting of the cave.

Bit and Ivy both visibly swallowed, looking suddenly more nervous.

“Okay,” Bit said, “we’re going.” His blonde companion stepped out from her tunnel and joined the little group as it moves towards the opening of the tunnel.

She was just passing the two men when Hero moved. He exchanged his pick for his sword in one motion and brought it around without ceremony to pierce her back. She didn’t make a sound, just dissolved into black snow which settles to the ground around the pile of her resources, among which are several diamonds and a single glimmering emerald.

Damned miner, Player thought, wishing that the jail time for being killed in the open world was quite a bit longer than it was. Both of the casualties would be actively participating again tomorrow morning. He should have foreseen that issue: she knew what she was doing.

Hero bent and picked up the gems. Bit and Ivy didn’t even notice the girl’s death. They wouldn’t until they were out of the cave.

Player stepped forward and bent to pick up the door that they must have taken off its hinges on their way into the cave. He walked a few steps into the tunnel and set it back in its original place. It wouldn’t stop people, obviously, but generally other miners respected the doors’ significance as barriers.

That done, Player crossed the smallish cavern that had been so dark and full of promise on his last visit. He sank down on a block of stone that jutted from the wall. Above his head, a redstone ore deposit glowed with a crimson light that reflected off a gold ore not far away. The farmers really had no idea what they were doing if they left all this be.

Player put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, letting the quiet of the caves calm him down. What a relief it would be if the millions of tons of rock above him would give way and crush him below their weight. Of course, it would be a temporary relief here, in the game, where mortality was a mere concept, but a relief nonetheless.

It didn’t occur to him to consider Hero until Player heard footsteps approaching. He looked up at the man looking down at him.

“Do you feel betrayed?” Hero asked, his head tilted just so, an inquisitive expression.

Player took a deep breath. “No,” he said, “they’re just doing what people do. They have no one to answer to, so they do whatever they please.”

“Then why are you sitting here?”

“I, uh,” he looked down at his clasped hands, “I’m hurt that they knew how to come down here, not because they did. Clarence must have told them where to go.”

“The one with the big dopey eyes?” Hero asked, a sneer in his voice, “that’s why you feel betrayed by?”

Player nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He put his head in his hands again and felt a tear run out of each eye. It was peculiar that they should be allowed to cry in the game. There was no point to this expression, other than to express pain or fear or sadness.

Player was being stupid anyway. Stop crying, buck up, be a man, he told himself, and for the love of god, get yourself under control and stop thinking about these things.

Then Hero said the most unexpected thing, “Do you want me to hurt him?”

Player raised his head to look at him, so surprised that he couldn’t do anything but gape, his mouth slightly open. Hero was looking back at him through slitted luminous eyes, his face creased into an expression that Player could only describe as malevolence. His eyebrows have become two slanted slashes across his forehead, his mouth a grim line, downturned at the corners. He looked, Player thought with the abruptness he was used to when what was the game and what was not the game clashed in his mind, like a king about to pass judgment on a particularly petty thief and show no mercy while doing it.

“Well?” Hero asked.

Player found his voice, “No!” he said, with such force that the look on Hero’s face went from contempt to genuine surprise. “No, I don’t want you to hurt him.” 

Just the thought of Hero, who moved so fast with a sword that he couldn’t even see him, going up against the boy who drank milk straight out of the bucket and came down into the mines to talk even though he hated being so far underground made Player feel sick. The same sweet innocent boy might or might not have let slip where Player had found his next cave system, but nevermind that, and nevermind that he had shot Clarence and killed him in survival games. That was the nature of the beast, it meant nothing. And especially nevermind that Hero had been watching out for him for the two days since they had been paired up. None of that mattered; what mattered that if Hero went after Clarence, it would be a slaughter, and Player didn’t want Clarence hurt.

“Fine then,” Hero said, “then start mining. We came down here for a reason, didn’t we?”

Player sighed and stood up, “Yes, we did.”

The smirk was back, but maybe it was a touch less self-satisfied than before, “Lead the way, oh great miner.”

Player couldn’t help himself: a smile tugged at his mouth. It was peculiar that the game let him smile as well as cry, and even do both at the same time. Hero was obviously overlooking the oddness of that, and Player was grateful for it.

He got to his feet, dusting off his hands from the moisture of his own tears, and took the familiar weight of the pickaxe off his back. “First thing is first,” he said, and points upwards, “we need to get to that.”

Hero tilted his head back, revealing a pronounced Adam's apple and line of untanned flesh under his chin. He frowned, “What, do you want me to put you on my shoulders?”

Player shook his head, “No. I just need a few blocks of cobblestone, that’s all.” Though maybe the shoulders thing would work someday if he ever got up the courage to actually touch Hero on purpose.

Hero shrugged and produced a few from his inventory, tossing the stack to Player underhanded across the space between them. Then he turned away and ambled down the tunnel, swinging his sword back and forth without purpose. Player watched him walk for a few moments, then shook himself and built a rough staircase to the ores above him, Hero watching with detached fascination from across the cavern as he loosened the blocks, then broke them so that the game interface kicked in and dropped them to the floor.

Player ducked his head down to look at Hero under the ceiling of the cave. The man returned his gaze levelly, and Player had to look away after a moment, stretching back into the hollow he had made for himself. What had he done to deserve a partner like this?


	13. Can You Really Call it Friendship if it Lasts Less Than a Week?

“So, it turns out that Player is more of a problem than we thought he would be.”

“Throwing lava on someone isn’t real fighting it’s just a sneaky trick to get a lucky shot in.”

“You’re just sulking ‘cause he got you with his ‘sneaky trick.’ The big, bad gladiator taken down by the miner who doesn’t even rank in the top 3,000 for combat. I can’t believe you fell for the bucket of lava thing. Did you not see he was holding it?”

“He’s not ranked in the top 3,000?”

“Nope. He sucks at survival games, though by Clarence’s account he’s pretty badass when it comes to The Herobrine. The guy can run.”

“Just about all he’s good at, probably.”

“That and finding good ore veins.”

* * *

Overall, Player was satisfied. The new cave system was nowhere near tapped out, but he took the precaution of finding all of the more valuable items on the first sweep through, leaving only iron and coal for his next visit. It wouldn’t be a very interesting trip, but it would be a productive one.

Hero, overall, was grumpy. He had a gladiator’s need for excitement, and mining, aside from the occasional dungeon, didn’t provide it. It didn’t help that the mobs seemed to be giving them a wide-berth, depriving Player of the discomfort of being shot by a skeleton, and Hero the moderate physical strain of dealing with weak mobs.

By the time they were done with the cave, both of them were weighed down by enough ores and gemstones to keep them fed and participating in games for days, though right then neither of them were particularly excited about getting involved with the rest of the complex.

“Are you going to let me sleep now?” Player asked.

Hero snorted and didn’t reply.

Player hauled himself up and over a short cliff of stone, and Hero leaped up nimbly behind him, before he was all the way up, seemingly without needing to use his hands at all. When Player finally got his head above the lip the man was sitting on a block of cobblestone, hands resting on the hilt of his sword, point-down in the rock at his feet. He seemed exceedingly bored.

Player bit his own tongue and walked right by him, and as soon as he was out of the way Hero was up and following, allowing Player to guide them out of the cave.

There were a few other miners on the higher levels, working with crude stone picks or the moderately efficient iron. Some had companions with them, but none were a gladiator-miner pair. Player assumes that gladiators were simply too strong-willed and hyperactive to have the patience to be below ground for long. The exception appeared to be Hero, but the man was so full of pent-up energy that he seemed to be vibrating. Maybe that was just the lighting from the torches.

They reached the surface, passed through the portal back into the main complex, Hero keeping pace now, his sword diplomatically on his back, not in his hand. He had shoved his hands deep into his pockets. 

Player began to sort through his inventory even before they got to the room, hefting stacks of various ores in his hands, counting pieces of coal. Hero held out a hand suddenly, stopping Player from walking right into another person who also had their inventory grid open in front of them. Player walked into Hero’s arm instead and bounces back of it, perhaps with a bit too much energy. He was unsure that he could have Hero actually touching him without losing his mind. He didn’t want to find out.

In the room, Player sorted through the items in his inventory and put them into the chests. All of them were locked so that only he could open them, though Hero probably has access as well since they were linked. No one besides the two of them would ever be able to get their hands on those supplies.

Player ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling the rock dust and grit under his palm. His body was sticky with sweat and itchy with cave debris. His nails were also gunked with dirt and dust, but they were nearly always like that: it was just part of working in the mines. He felt a sudden urge to clean them.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Player said to Hero, not turning to face him.  _ Please don’t say you’ll go with me. _

“Okay,” Hero said and left it at that. He didn’t sound particularly interested.

PLayer sighed in relief and set his pickaxe in the item frame waiting for it. He didn’t need it in the showers. He walked to the bathroom down the hall without taking anything with him at all. Everything he needed was already there.

Player took one of the shower stalls and locked it firmly behind him. He turned on the water and let it warm while he stripped off his clothes.

The water felt good in his hair and down his back, and Player sighed when he steps into it, turning his face up into the spray. He was glad for conveniences like these. As someone who had spent the night in the mines more than once, he could actually appreciate them. He rinsed himself once thoroughly before reaching for the shampoo that’s sitting on a ledge inside the shower.

He was rubbing the last of the soap out of his hair when there was a sudden knock on the door to the stall. Player jumped, almost lost his balance on the slick tiled floor beneath him.

“Player?” asked Clarence’s voice.

Player didn’t respond, but he felt blood rush into his face. He must have been bright red.

The water in the shower turned off: time was up. Player stayed where he is, letting the excess water shed off his skin. He’d leave in a few minutes.

“I need to talk to you,” Clarence said, “About the thing with Ivy and Bit.”

He was suddenly furious. Player stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel off of the rack in the stall. He pulled it around his waist and held it with one hand. He threw open the door to the stall.

Clarence was standing on the other side, and he started in surprise at the suddenness of Player’s appearance.

“They were in my mine,” Player said, “I can defend my territory from anyone that sets foot in it without my permission. It says so in the rules.”

“But what is really necessary to?”

“Ever been rushed by a gladiator who’s ready to send you to the deader’s jail for a night?”

“No,”

“I have been before today. That’s why I know the lava trick. The gladiator rushed me, so I did to him what he would have done to me.” Player hadn’t realized how much taller than Clarence he was. The other man was barely up to his shoulder. Also, somewhat disconcertingly, he seemed to be looking at Player’s chest.

Player looked down at himself. There was still a scar on his right pectoral from a game a couple of weeks ago. It was fading fast but was still visible.

He closed the door again, instinctively, and untied the towel from around his waist. He used it to dry his hair, taking most of the water off it. He started pulling on his relatively clean clothes. They left streaks of dirt across his skin, but he didn’t care. He pulled on his shirt and opens the door of the stall again.

Clarence was still standing there, looking shocked. His big brown cow eyes were wide and unseeing, his whole body tense. Player brushed past him, but Clarence reached out and grabs his arm. His grip was surprisingly strong, and there were calluses on his hands from working in the fields around the farm.

“I’m sorry for what they did,” he said, so quietly that Player could barely hear. “I wouldn’t have told them about it if I thought they’d go down there.”

Player shook himself free, perhaps a bit too abruptly, then sighed. “Don’t worry about it. They had a miner with them. It’s on her that they broke the agreements.”

Clarence nodded once slowly, “Did you kill her too? Bit says he hasn’t seen her since they left.”

“Hero did, not me.”

Clarence nodded again, still not looking at Player. “Hero did it,” He echoed.

“Really, just,” Player took a breath, “don’t worry about what they did. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Ya. I’m going back to the farm now. See you tomorrow.”

“See you,” Player walked the rest of the way out of the bathroom. He was still quietly fuming and was beginning to feel guilty for talking to Clarence so brusquely. He walked down the hall thinking about the mines and about Hero, particularly about Hero’s reaction to his trick with the entrance. It was a lot of laughing, yes, but was it malicious or simply entertained?

Regardless, halfway down the hallway, it occurred to him that there was a question he should have asked Hero a couple of days ago. For whatever reason, he felt okay talking to the man now, like he could trust Hero not to react badly.

Player pushed open the door to the rooms, the question already half-formed on his mouth. “Hero-,” he said, before stopping. The room was empty, and the door to Hero’s sleeping space was open so the man wasn’t in there.

“Hero?” Player said again, confused.

But Hero was definitely gone.

He left behind the apples from breakfast, Player noticed. They’re in a wooden bowl on the table, still red and perfect. He picked one up, determined not to attend dinner that night but still starving. He bit into the fruit, and devoured the whole thing, core and all, then moved on to the other two.

Having eaten, Player shook off his question for now and moved to the bookshelf. He selected a volume at random and sat down to read. It was a fairly new volume, written by some woodsman with too much free time on their hands, and it was mostly romantic. Player had never had a problem with romance, though the stories had never meshed with reality for him. He read as much as he could stand to read--until the writing became overly soppy--and then sighed and set it aside.

Hero was still nowhere to be found. Maybe he snuck in a survival game and then went for dinner. That was the most likely scenario, but it was taking far too long for him to get back.

Player stood up with a sigh and went to his room. He flicked off the switch in the main room, shutting off the redstone lamp in the ceiling. He didn’t lock his door, just strips down and flicked his clothing into his chest. They would be clean in the morning: such was the nature of the game. He crawled into bed, not very tired but knowing there was nothing better to do during the night. He fell asleep after a half-hour and remembered nothing until morning.

More than five hours later, when Player was still asleep, the door to his bedroom opened slowly. Two glowing white eyes peered in, checking that the man was indeed asleep in the room. They withdrew and closed the door again. Hero had been busy in the open world, and he had a few things to put in place before morning.


	14. Does this seem Familiar?

Memo distributed to staff:

A reminder to all: in three days time, special advisors will be arriving to assist in diagnosing subject 0000. Please be respectful and helpful to our guests while they are here.

* * *

Player woke up when the alarm bell went off. He rolled out of bed and fumbled in the chest for his clothes, which he yanked on, not caring about how he looked. The door of his room was ajar, which didn’t register as odd until he stepped out into the main area and saw Hero’s legs kicking idly over the back of the couch.

The man was resting with his head on the cushions, neck bent slightly to look at the book in his hands. Player felt a sinking feeling in his chest as he realized it was the romance novel by the woodsman. Hero was farther through it than he was, and he was frowning slightly.

“What are you doing?” Player asked before he can stop himself.

Hero turned his head and looked at him with eyebrows knit close together with puzzlement, “This is the strangest thing that I’ve ever read.”

Player felt himself flush red. He turned his back on the man, who was still kicking his legs in mild agitation. Hero’s sword was lying on the table, gleaming with the sheen of enchantments. Beside it, there was the bowl that was full of apples the previous night, but Player ate all of them. Instead, there was a handful of small red fruit. Strawberries? Those weren’t part of the regular game, Player knew that. Only the very best farmers could even get the seeds, and often they wouldn’t grow. This bowl of them would cost as much as a stack of iron if Player were to buy it. Hero hadn’t bought anything; he hadn’t been out during market hours, so where did he get them?

Someone touched Player gently on the back. He leaped away instinctively, electrified. Hero pulled his hand away, frowning. Player didn’t even see him get up.

Hero glanced down at the open book in his hand. He snapped it shut dismissively, and turned to replace it on the shelf. Player was still shivering from the touch.

“Breakfast,” Player said, his voice a squeak, and went to retrieve his pickaxe. Hero picked up the sword from the table and took one of the strawberries from the bowl. He bit into it, eating all the way down to the green leaves.

Player was taken aback by the offhand way that the man did it. It was like he always had such delicacies. 

He reached out himself and took one of the small red fruits. Player turned it in his fingers, trying to remember if he had ever had a strawberry before in his time in the game. He bit into the fruit and sweetness flooded his mouth.

Hero had already turned away and was opening the door to the corridor. Player finished off the strawberry hurriedly and follows him. There were barely any other people in the corridor, and Player found himself walking next to Hero, though not close enough to be companionable.

They each got a tray of food in the cafeteria, and Player went to his regular table. Hero sat down across from him.

Player ripped into his loaf of bread with gusto. All he had to eat the night before were a couple apples, and the strawberry had served to stimulate his appetite. He watched Hero do the same out of the corner of his eye. 

He still wasn’t entirely sure about Hero. The man seemed to be disconnected from the usual way of things. There was a difference between what was the right thing to do and what Hero did in any situation. Still, Player was starting to enjoy his company. He knew Clarence about a week before he gauged him right. He could give Hero that long.

The farmers passed by the table. Player saw Spark pause and start to come towards him and Hero, but Clarence laid a hand on her arm and tugged her away. The others didn’t even glance over.

Player looked down. He could feel himself losing his appetite already. Hero kicked his leg under the table, hard enough to make Player wince. He looked up, but Hero wasn’t returning the stare. He was still chewing, concentrating on his food.

Player went back to his own tray. His hunger returned a little, and he dug into the rest of the meal. It wouldn’t occur to him until much later that had Hero kicked him exactly for this purpose.

The remainder of the group of girls sat at the far end of the table, as far away from Hero and Player as possible. Their companions were with them, and they talked among themselves, mostly in pairs. A couple of the girls glanced towards Player. They giggled to each other.

The screen at the end of the room lit up. The day’s predicted weather report scrolls by at lightning speed. Then the game assignment: minigames. Player turned back around on his bench, looking pained. He needed to go back to the room and get that novel. He was going to need it.

Hero was still looking at the screen, appearing perplexed. He pulled his gaze away from it and looked at Player. At least, Player thought he was. It was hard to tell in someone without irises.

Player finished off his breakfast and jumped up. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to Hero automatically. He jogged out of the cafeteria and back to the rooms to get the novel. When he got back, Hero was absent from the table, though his tray is still on it. Player paused only a moment before he skirts around the edge of the room, going to the side entrance, and sure enough, Hero was already there. He was leaning against the wall and scowling. The light from his eyes was almost as bright as the beam of a beacon.

Player paused, unsure, but Hero was already looking up. His body language relaxed, and his eyes dimmed slightly. He replaced his sword on his back and crossed his arms, looking at Player.

“Why did you bring that?”

Player looked down at the book in his hand. “I’m not going to be doing that much today.”

Hero didn’t argue. He waited patiently for Player to walk over to him. Then he turned and walked beside him again, still not close enough to be companionable. Player relaxed. He popped open his inventory grid while he was walking to stow the book.

“What are minigames?” Hero asked finally, breaking the silence.

Player looked at him like he was stupid, which he was. Who didn’t know what minigames were? Hero, apparently.

“It’s just a bunch of short games back-to-back,” Player said, “Spleef, One in the Chamber, that kind of stuff.” He didn’t look over at Hero, but he thought he saw the man make a confused face. He was totally lost.

Player tucked the book into one of his inventory slots, stacking up some cobblestone to tidy up the space. They got to the lobby area, and Hero paused. Player glanced up, moved to the automatic placement sign, and touched it. Instantly both he and Hero were in one of the game lobbies. The white-eyed man looked around slowly. It was the same lobby as two days ago. Hero sighed and walked over to the tree.

Player went to his corner and scrambled up into the hard-to-reach place with his back to the wall. He popped open his inventory and pulled out the book, flipped it open to his bookmark. Hero had bent the corner of a page about half an inch further on, so that must be where he was. He must have been up half the night reading.

It was only about three pages further on that Player first saw one of the marginal notes. It was written in a slanting hand, tight and looping, and because Player had never seen it before it was barely legible. “Do none of them live in the world?”

Player frowned. He knew this is a game. Surely Hero knew that none of them lived outside the game. He decided not to bring it up.

Other people began filtering into the room, in pairs now, not in larger groups. Player watched them, the poorly written book not able to hold his attention, and wondered why this happened. There surely had to be more relationships ruined than just his with the farmers, which really hadn’t been that much of a relationship in the first place.

Gaimon and Ivy came through the portal of the lobby. Player decided now was a good time to go back to reading. He spared a glance for Hero, who was sitting with his back to the tree-trunk and his sword in the wood beside his legs. His eyes were closed, and his head leaned back against the trunk. He appeared to be asleep.

Player grinned to himself as he read the note in the margin again, though he still had no idea what it meant. Then he turned the page and kept reading. It really is a horrible book. Player regretted taking this one and not any of the others he had.

The countdown started, announcing that the game was about to begin. Player looked up to see what suffering he’s in for. Runner, which was kind of like spleef, only you couldn’t stand still and be clever about it. He groaned inwardly, but on the outside didn’t show a flicker of disdain.

He jumped down from the ledge and brushed off his back, joining the other players in stretching their muscles, though it was only a formality for him. Player had no chance. He noticed Hero watching out of one half-open eye, and he gave him a shaky smile.

Then they were in the arena, suspended high above a pit of lava, three layers of clay blocks up. Player bounced, flexed his legs, and assumed a sprinter’s stance. His best shot was to move as fast as possible and get out of the way.

Beside him, Hero watched, fascinated, as all the other contestants took up similar positions. With only a second left, he lazily pressed up on the balls of his feet.

The bell sounded, and Player took off. He ducked past someone’s arm, leaped over a gap made by another runner, danced to the side when faced with two people working as a team. He knew that behind him the blocks were falling away: taking a step backward was not an option.

Something hit Player in the side, probably another person’s fist. He flew out of the arena space, out to where there was no ground beneath him all the way down to the lava below. He curled instinctively into a ball as he plummeted, though it made no difference. The moment he touched the lava, he was on an observation platform on the outside of the arena, looking down on those lucky enough to still be alive. He was the first one there. 

Player sighed and sat down on one of the blocks around the edge of the platform and took out the book. He was going to get through most if not all of it today. He just couldn’t compete, and he didn’t know why. Even at One in the Chamber, he could barely draw his bow before someone hit him in the back with an ax.

He spared a glance for the arena out the window of the observation room and did a double-take. Hero had fallen through to the second level. Directly above him was a square of nothing in the clay. He didn’t know to start running. But that wasn’t what surprised Player.

Hero was slowly carving away the entire second floor of the arena. He hadn’t missed a single block since he fell, which was miraculous in and of itself. 

The man seemed to be grimacing the effort of focus. Player knew that he couldn’t miss one step or it was all over. He sat forward, admiration growing somewhere in his stomach.

A heavily-built man dropped down in front of Hero. He was carrying a sword and Hero was unarmed, but that didn’t make any difference.

There was a moment of inertia where no one seemed to be moving. Then Hero was off the clay platform and in the air. He slung an arm around the man’s neck, suspended by momentum and force. Then there was the snap of reversing trajectories, and Hero let go, facing the other direction.

The gladiator went over, onto his back. He fells through the dissolving floor and hit the next level down on his back. Player almost felt the breath whoosh out of him. If the game had been survival games, the man’s back would have broken.

“Jesus Christ,” someone said from behind Player, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Player didn’t reply. His chest was tight and his hands shaky. What was this?

Hero didn’t win the game. He ran out of space on the second level and by that time the lowest area had been riddled with holes. He didn’t fall within arms reach of a block, but if he had Player was convinced that the outcome would have been different.

Hero curled into a ball on the way down, just as Player did. It was instinctive. Except that, when Hero touches the lava, everyone was sent back to the lobby.

Player looked around and found Hero, still curled up, on the ground a couple of feet away. His eyes were squeezed shut. 

“Hey,” Player said to him, “you alright?”

Hero opened his eyes. He looked down at himself, ran hands over his torso and legs. Then he looked up at Player, “I guess so.”

The tightness in Player’s chest eased slightly. 

Hero looked very confused, and the scowl on his face deepened. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could he was mobbed by a group, all asking the same question at once: “how did you do that?”

Player was shoved back, away from Hero, until he was out of sight and reach.

He rolled his eyes and steps away from the crowd. When he looked around, there are only two other people who aren’t threatening to smother Hero. They were Ivy and Gaiman, and they were standing on the far side of the lobby, talking. They didn’t look very hospitable.

Player went back to his place on the wall to wait for the next game to start.

He watched the crowd around Hero grow still, then drawback as fast as a crowd of people packed together like sardines could draw back. In the middle of the circle, Hero was standing. Just standing, but his eyes were casting light on the ground in front of him, and his arms were halfway out to his sides. Whatever he had said, he meant it. 

Hero waited until the group had dispersed, then went to the tree and pulled himself up to the branch he always sat on. On his way up, he seemed to grab handholds that didn't actually exist. He stayed there until the next countdown started, then jumps down along with Player and the others to stretch and jog in place until they were transported into the game.

Player didn’t actually know the name of the minigame. He only knew the concept: gather as many sheep in your area as possible. It had been modified from the 4-person team version to a 2-person idea. That meant the designated pens have been dropped down a few blocks, making it nearly impossible to carry out successful raids.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Hero asked, making Player jump. He needed to stop being so surprised by the man’s presence.

“We collect sheep, and gather them here,” Player said, pointing with his iron sword at the pen. “The team with the most wins.”

Hero nodded. He was turning his head left, right, left again, taking in the arena. “I can keep them off us,” 

Player had thought so, “They won’t go down easy. Not in this game.”

Hero grinned that animal predatory grin, “Their game, my rules.”

The first sheep spawned, and the other teams made for the center of the platform, 18 people were running full-tilt and preparing to use their weapons, hands, feet, or whatever else they needed to.

And while Player was still trying to figure out what Hero meant, Hero joined the charge. Only, it was obvious he wasn’t going for the sheep.

Player took one lurching step, then found his stride. He was far enough back that he had a good view of what happens when Hero hit the brawl.

One of the other players, their helmet identified them as the green team, already had the sheep, and was hauling it backward. The poor animal was baaing and struggling, but it got nowhere. The partner of the one holding the sheep was doing his best to keep the other teams at bay.

Ivy had just seized the sheep under its front legs when Hero arrives in the fight.

It started out as simply an over-zealous gladiator doing what gladiators did best: killing things. He stepped in and slashes upwards, and his sword went right through the body of a red-team player, which wasn’t supposed to happen. This kind of game wasn’t supposed to contain such violence.

Hero followed through the strike by plunging the blade into the neck of another person. He drew it out, used the body of a third player as a step, and threw himself over the crowd to land directly on top of the sheep.

He relieved Ivy of her lower arms in one movement, pushed off her chest and tucked into a backward roll that put his legs firmly around the neck of the other player with a hold on the sheep. Hero continued the move, pulling the man to the ground to be caught under the feet of the others, still pushing forward for a chance at the prize. But, of course, Hero wasn’t stepped on. With gymnastic ease, he was on his feet again.

Player stopped dead several blocks away and just watched this strange dance between Hero’s body and the rest of the game. He was still standing there when Hero straightened up, arms slick with blood and pieces of flesh, particles that Player had never seen before in the game glistening in the fluids. 

Hero stretched with his arms over his head, like it was no big deal to slaughter a whole arena. Then he reached down and slapped the terrified sheep on its flank. The animal let out startled baa and trundled towards Player.

Player caught the animal, and it pushed against him, struggling against his grip. The thick wool was spattered with red, and Hero had left a perfect crimson handprint on its rear flank. There shouldn’t have been any gore, nevermind this much of it, not in a game like this.

Player backed away from Hero, more nervous than scared. The man wasn’t paying attention; he was pacing around the center of the arena, watching the other teams’ bases. Player could have told him not to worry, not for a minute or two at least, but he didn’t feel like saying anything.

He pushed the sheep off the lip into their pit, and it turned a bright blue that matched the color of Player’s leather helmet. It baad at him, half-offended, then lost interest and just stood there.

Hero was still pacing. The gore was starting to dry up as the respawn timers came to an end. People start popping into existence around the arena. None of them charged Hero.

The man seemed to make a decision and jogged back to Player.

“I’ll play fair,” he said.

Player gave him a blank look. He took a breath, but it was almost a full minutes before he could say anything, and then it was, “I thought you were.”

The others were moving hesitantly out of their areas, making furtive movements towards the center of the arena.

Hero cocked his head to the side and gave it some thought. “Okay,” he said, “I won’t play fair. I’ll handicap myself.” He switched his sword to his left hand.

Player shrugged, “If you want to.” As far as he was concerned, one sheep is a good prize. He was perfectly content to sit back and wait for the game to end.

There was a shout from the other players in the arena as they all jumped on Hero and Player, from all three sides.

Player felt his body pierced by three different swords. He didn’t feel so much as a flicker of surprise. He blinked, and then he was spectating. The respawn timer counted down in the corner of his vision.

Hero was doing his thing below. His sword was in his left hand, but it didn’t seem to be making a difference. He was still cutting through the ranks like butter.

“There’s no stopping him,” Ivy’s voice said from a few feet away. She was among the first death in the second slaughter.

Player turned his head to look at her, but she wasn’t making eye contact.

“He’s not human,” She said like she really believed it, “It’s...it’s impossible to take on that many people and come out alive.”

“We’ve never had a gladiator that strong,” said another voice, this one belonging to a thin guy with oversized glasses even farther away from Player than Ivy, “but it doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.”

Ivy just shook her head.

Player looked down at the slaughter and smiled to himself. He thought he was beginning to like Hero. He’d give it a week before he called it a friendship.


	15. A Different Perspective

Well, 0000, are you still worried about 4979?

“No…”

The experiment has been proceeding as expected. You have done well.

“I still don’t know what this experiment is. You’re playing with something you don’t understand.”

I understand everything, 0000, you of all people should know that.

“Like Nether you do.”

* * *

The woman standing outside of the complex looked to be half African-American. She had coffee skin and tightly curled black hair pulled back in a headband, as well as the characteristic wide nose. She was tall and slender, with small breasts and very little body fat to speak of. She also had dark eyes that shifted side to side almost constantly and gave the impressions she was performing complex calculus in her head. Most of the time, this impression was correct.

The resident technology specialist, Mr. Hipler, stepped out of the low concrete structure to greet her. He introduced himself and shook her hand.

“Pleased to have you here, Miss…”

“Dane,” She replied, “Dr. Janus Dane, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“A doctor of what, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Paranormal and superhuman phenomenon.” She saw the confusion in his eyes, “it was an extremely specialized school. I assure you, the educational worth was genuine.”

The man laughed nervously, “Well if there’s one thing we need right now, it’s a Doctor of paranormal activity.”

“Yes, I read your emails, but it was all rather vague. What, exactly, is the problem?”

He lead her inside the building, lowering his voice as he did. “We have a player who is participating in our game, but who does not have a physical body.”

Dr. Dane’s mouth turned up at the corners, “You mean, your system has Herobrine in it?”

The man stopped walking, “No. That is not at all what I mean. The program is intricate, no doubt, but it is not sentient, and it is not Herobrine.”

“Who else could it be?” She asked, “Herobrine is the only one mentioned in any lore about this game.”

He just gaped at her for a moment. “Are you suggesting that this thing is not just a ‘what’, it is a ‘who?’”

“Yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting. Of course, first I must see some evidence of its existence at all. It could be that the boy simply has an imaginary friend. He is, after all, plugged into a game via his brain.”

“I...I never actually thought of that possibility.”

“Let’s have a look then,” she said, gesturing for him to lead the way again.

Mr. Hipler sighed and lead her to the center of the circular complex, into the system room.

The space was packed wall to wall with servers and circuits, wires and cables and little green boards with intricate miniature-city designs on them. In the middle of it all was a black cylindrical structure almost six feet in height.

“This is the System,” Mr. Hipler explained, “the housing of a complex program that regulates the game at all times and provides reports about individual players. It also has access to the building’s security systems and all other technology”

“By ‘complex,’ do you mean that it can think for itself?” Dr. Dane asked.

“Not at all,” he protested, “it is entirely under our control.”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s why it seems to be playing Pong.”

The screen of the device was displaying a version of the old game, the two lines moving back and forth to block the movement of a small white ball between them.

Mr. Hipler shifted uncomfortably, “Sometimes we don’t know why it does what it does, only that it does it for a reason.”

Dr. Dane looked at the screen of the System again and frowned. Words were appearing there in white text on a black background.

“Hello, Janus Dane,” The System spelled out.

Janus Dane glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the room. “Hello,” she said aloud.

“It won’t work like that,” Mr. Hipler said, “it’s not equipt with a microphone. You’ll have to type…”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the System typed, “are you here about 0000?”

“If that is the name you’ve given to Herobrine, then yes.”

“Would you like to see a video of him?”

Dr. Dane considered it, “Yes, that would be most helpful.”

“Very well,” typed the computer, “these are taken from the view of 4979.”

A blurry image appeared on the screen, then sharpened into the inside of a room. The view seemed to be moving; flicking left to right like a person glancing around. A pair of legs were visible over the back of a couch, kicking idly.

4979, for that, must be whose eyes these belonged, followed the legs down to the face of a man, hardened and serious, tanned skin furrowed about his eyes, the stubble of a day unshaven on his chin. The man looked up at the view, his eyes blank and white and glowing slightly, and said something that Dr. Dane could not hear. As the view turned away, the barest flicker of a smile passed over 0000’s face.

“That video is from just over three days ago,” the System informed Dr. Dane and Mr. Hipler, as the screen went dark.

“Is that it?” Dr. Dane asked, “what about some real play, with the other players?”

“As you wish,” the system hummed and displays a new image.

Dr. Dane covered her mouth by reflex at the sight but lowered her hand again almost immediately. Her blood was pounding in her veins, excitement coursing through her. She had one. Finally, she had one all on her own.

“Good God,” Mr. Hipler said, “it’s a slaughter.”

In her head, Dr. Dane disagreed. None of these people died. They suffered a mild inconvenience, sure, but they didn’t die. This is a display of power, nothing more.

“Mr. Hipler,” she said, “I think you may have a slight problem.”

“Not a problem at all,” the System typed out on its screen. “He is under my control and separated from the majority of his powers. He’s not happy about it, but it is necessary.”

Dr. Dane frowned, turned to Mr. Hipler, “Is that true?”

The man looked confused.

The type on the screen of the System had changed the font. It now looked something like the Courier fonts so popular in the past decades, except thicker, like it had been bolded, and was a shade of bright toxic green.

“I control everything in the digital world, Janus. 0000 will obey my will as long as I wish to impose it on him.” Then the text reverted to its white cheerful self, “Goodbye for now.”

Dr. Dane looked at Mr. Hipler. The man looked like he had just been slapped.

“Perhaps I should take a look at this 4979,” she said.

“Yes,” He said, “yes of course.”

The building was a circular affair arranged so that no one room was farther from the server than any other. Room number 4979 was on the far side of the circle, not far as the crow flew but for walking humans almost a half of a mile away. 

When they stopped outside it, Dr. Dane looked into the hole in the white door.

“Who are they?” She asked.

“His family,” Mr. Hipler said. Who else?

“Just between you and me, can he hear them through that cover?”

He shook his head, “No. We know that some coma patients are partially aware of their surroundings. He’s completely isolated from outside stimuli. Excluding the IVs and monitoring equipment, but we’ve had no indication that any of the patients can feel those.”

Dr. Dane nodded and stepped back from the door. “We should wait.”

So they did, for ten long minutes in silence. Mr. Hipler fidgeted. Dr. Dane ran her calculus equations inside her head. Then 4979’s family filed past, heads high but eyes sad. They each smiled at Mr. Hipler: their son’s/brother’s best hope at waking up.

When they’re out of sight, Dr. Dane stepped into the room. She took the chart from the end of the bed and scanned it. At the top of it is 4979’s real name. She raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how painfully ironic this is,” Dr. Dane commented to the man.

Mr. Hipler laughed nervously. 

“Presents with injury to both arms, nerve damage almost certainly, though no way to tell,” she murmured, “lack of endorphins. Low levels of Dopamine, Serotonin levels all over the place. Melatonin...Oxytocin even. But this...wasn’t a suicide attempt?”

“No,” he left it at that.

“Hmm…” Dr. Dane turned the page, “and about a week ago I see it got a bit better.”

“And he’s been improving since then, yes.”

“Where are the technicians? The two who are taking notes,”

“They’re off for visiting hours. Families like privacy.”

Dr. Dane sat down in one of the chairs beside the thing that 4979 was held in, “I think I’m ready to give an opinion.”

Mr. Hipler hesitantly sat down in the other chair. He rested his elbows on the arms and twiddled his thumbs.

“You have a problem,” Dr. Dane informed him, “you have a disembodied personality on your machines. While the system probably has it restrained at the moment, it will break free, and it will wreak havoc.”

“Surely,” he said, “it can’t be a serious threat. It’s only a program after all.”

Dr. Dane prepared herself for a lecture, “I assume that you have read up on my and my organization’s research?”

He nodded.

“Then you are aware that we have proven the existence of ghostly entities, the spirits of dead humans or other less-familiar entities.”

He nodded, “I read the research.”

“Good.” She took a breath, “how much trouble you’re on depends on what kind of thing you have in the system. If it’s the ghost of a human, you’ll probably be fine. If it’s something else entirely… It could kill some, if not all, of your patients if it breaks its bonds.”

He swallowed, “what should we do?”

“Imprison it again, as thoroughly as possible, and keep it contained. On the off chance that it’s not just some poor soul who died at his computer, it’s the best option.”

“What about 4979?”

Dr. Dane looked beside her at the still form. He looked almost dead. “You might lose the one, but if it’s what I think it is, you’ll lose them all.”

Mr. Hipler nodded. “How likely is that outcome?”

Dr. Dane opened her mouth, but at that moment someone started screaming out from the hallway.


	16. Catalyst

“The defibrillator! Get the defibrillator!”

“Oh my god, oh my god!”

“And get her out of here.”

“My son, what’s happening to my son?!,”

“Out! Good: hand me that. Charging...clear! Charging… Clear! Charging… Clear!”

Three days after the incident with the mini-games, Player woke up happy. He laid in bed for a moment, surprised and trying to remember the last time he woke up actually feeling good. It had been at least three months, he knew that.

Grinning, he got up from the bed and pulled on his clothes. It was just a day, like any other day here, but he felt different.

Hero was waiting for him, sitting upside-down on the sofa with his legs over the back and his head on the cushion. He was reading something, but Player didn’t really bother looking at what. The white-eyed man seemed to be making his way systematically through Player’s small collection of books.

He glanced up as Player came in, then swiveled himself around until he was the right way up. In doing so, his shirt momentarily stuck to the sofa rather than Hero. It exposed a thin strip of skin, tan and moving with the flex of muscles, and there it was again: like being punched in the gut. Player made himself look elsewhere before the ache became too intense.

“Ready?” He asked Hero.

The man just nodded, white eyes unreadable but undoubtedly still trained downward. 

Player opened the door of the room and waited for Hero to get moving. He didn’t speak again. The question about being ready was about as far as their conversation had gotten. Player dared not take it farther, partly because he couldn’t think of anything to say. And there was still something wrong about Hero, something that told Player--despite all his aches and temptations--that if he asked any kind of mundane personal question all he was going to get was a blank look.

Hero stayed where he was on the sofa for a long time, almost a full minute. Then he hefted the book and snapped it shut. He left it behind and stood up, slipped past Player into the hallway.

Player followed a moment later, wishing he had the courage to ask one of those mundane questions.

The two men sat in their regular place in the cafeteria. Hero, as usual, ate hunched forward slightly, hands on either side of his plate possessively.

Player ate more slowly, pushing his apple to one side without a glance. He’d take it with him to the games.

Then one of the girls at the end of the table turned to him and said, “Do you remember anything about the outside?”

Player came very close to choking, but he managed a hard swallow instead. He covered by taking a drink of water. That done, he shook his head, “No. Nothing at all.”

She shook her hair a little bit, as if not impressed, then looked at Hero, if anything a bit more flirtatiously, “What about you?”

Here was that blank look Player had been working so hard to avoid. Hero cocked his head to the side, one eyebrow raised slightly, mouth quirking down at the corners. “I don’t appreciate this joke,” his expression was saying.

The girl looked properly abashed. “Sorry,” she muttered and turned back to her friends. They didn’t look thrilled either.

Player went back to eating, taking smaller bites so he wouldn’t choke again.

“Outside what?” Hero asked.

Player looked up at the man. He looked genuinely confused. “You don’t know?”

Hero just gave him that look, this time a little less sneering and a little more confused.

Player sighed, “Outside the game, the real world, you know.”

The confusion cleared. “Right,” Hero said. He took another bite of food before going on, only just loud enough for Player to hear, “Yes, I remember the outside of the game.”

Player didn’t push it. People who remembered the outside came in two varieties: those with good memories and those with bad memories. The people with bad memories never talked about it.

Hero sounded like he had the bad sort.

The board across the room lit up, but Player didn’t turn around. He was still watching Hero. Hero was looking down. He pushed his food away.

“You okay?” Player asked almost automatically.

Hero looked up again in surprise as if he’d forgotten all about Player. His shoulders slumped slightly, and he took a breath, “I’m fine.”

Player didn’t believe him, but he didn’t say so. He glanced up at the board as sound exploded through the cafeteria again. Survival Games.

He grinned slightly, looking forward to it. He was still as useless as ever, but watching Hero was almost as good as actually winning. They were practically identical: it was very easy to imagine himself in Hero’s place. 

Player got up from the table, trusting Hero to follow him. He walked out into the hallway,

For the second time, Hero surprised him with a touch. For the second time, Player jumps away by reflex. Hero wasn’t bothered by the reaction, at least not visibly.

“If you know this is a game,” He said, “why don’t you log off?”

Player shook his head. Hero must have been living under a rock all this time, or at least down in the mines without anyone else to talk to. “We can’t leave,” he said, “besides, I’m not completely convinced this is a game.”

It was the first time he’d voiced the thought aloud, and he immediately regretted it. He regrets it because it makes sense.

Hero frowned, carving a furrow between his eyebrows, “What do you mean?”

Player glanced around. People were starting to trail past him, out into the game rooms and trading areas. He stepped to the side, to a deserted corner. What he was about to say was as near blasphemy as you could get in this place. Player took a deep breath, “What I’m saying is maybe our God had a hands-on approach to creation. Maybe this is just a test run of some higher power, making sure things functioned properly before it really got going making a world. How would we even know?”

Hero just looked at him for a minute, not frowning anymore but just thinking. He nodded, just once, as if conceding a point, and then turned away.  _ Poor kid is too smart for his own good,  _ he was thinking,  _ maybe that’s why no one talks to him. He’s wrong, of course, but from his point of view, it makes a lot of sense. _

Player sighed and followed Hero back into the game area. The man didn’t select the random lobby sign. Instead, he walked up to a particular lobby and tapped it to be let in, just like he saw Player do with the random sign the day before and the day before that.

Player opened his mouth, about to tell Hero that it wouldn’t work: the lobbies were always randomly assigned, but he blinked and was suddenly in one of the lobbies. Player threw up his hands (only metaphorically of course); he was done questioning Hero.

“Some of them remember a place outside of the game,” Hero said, “unless you think your god made those memories on purpose, your theory is invalid.”

Player blinked: were they really still talking about this? But Hero was looking at him, waiting for a response, so he took a second to think before he responded.

“No,” he half-lied, “I don’t think that. I know this is a game. It’s just an idea.” Disengaged: no more in that line of conversation.

Hero stopped what he was doing, which was studying the tree in the center of the lobby--a different one than he was used to--and looked back at Player. His eyes were a bit brighter than normal.

Player took an involuntary step back and felt his back meet solid stone. For a moment real fear sang through him, irrational in its timing. He blinked, and Hero was much closer than he had been a moment before, or maybe that was a trick of Player’s own mind.

“It was a philosopher’s question,” Hero said, “and philosophers can be wrong, it’s part of the job.”

“Wha-what?” Player asked, only just realizing that Hero didn’t have his sword drawn. His heart rate fell back into the normal zone.

Hero seemed to roll his eyes, though it was impossible to tell, “‘Is this world real?’ it’s one of those essential questions. Nature of reality...Metaphysics I think. Materialism or Idealism or something else entirely.”

Player was thoroughly confused, “What?”

Was it just his imagination, or did Hero flush slightly? “I had a guy go off about it on me once. I still remember some of it. It wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

A statement like that could only be followed by one question, “In the game or out of it?”

Hero snorted, “Before I woke up here and met you. That’s close enough to ‘outside.’”

Another pair of players came through the lobby’s portal, and Hero closed his mouth. He even seemed to be biting the corner of it, as if holding his lips together would stop him from talking.

Player felt himself shut down as well, the ability to have a conversation at all slipping away again. For the first time in a while, it was actually painful. He wanted to keep talking to Hero, even if it was about this metaphysics thing, which he didn’t understand at all.

But it wasn’t going to happen. Player let his eyes drift downwards and tried to banish the irritating ache in his chest by thinking about the mines. His new cave system was already running low, but he knew where he could find another one. The sound of bubbling lava was audible through one of the walls of the lower caverns.

Something bumped off of Player’s skull and onto the ground in front of him. It didn’t really hurt, but the impact made him cry out and flinch. Beside him, Hero snapped his head up. Player saw light illuminate the object at his feet, intensifying as Hero registered what it is, then turned away.

Player put his hand to the side of his head and felt the stuff. He felt bile creep into his throat. “Shit,” he muttered, then swallowed hard to keep hold of his breakfast. Definitely some kind of shit. Not a herbivore either, not judging by the smell and texture.

Player raised his eyes, already knowing who had the motivation to throw and a ready supply of animal excrement.

Gaimon was grinning. He had obviously reached his limit, fed up with Hero’s performance in the games and Player’s own actions (secretly, Player still couldn’t believe Gaimon hadn’t expect the lava bucket trick). He’d opted to torment Player over Hero, which would ordinarily be a fine plan. Unfortunately for Gaimon, Hero was sitting right next to Player, out of view from Gaimon’s angle near the lobby entrance.

By the time Player was in control of his stomach again, Hero was on his feet and unslinging the sword from his back. He didn’t speak, but Player could read the intention in his face. He stepped forward, toward the offending player.

Gaimon paled. He took two steps back, like he wanted to run for it. Ivy, who’d been standing behind him and looking on, shook her head slowly. She knew this was going to happen at least.

Hero was advancing, swinging the sword at his side menacingly. His body language was enough to clear a path through the crowd in the lobby. At its other end were Gaimon and Ivy.

Player caught sight of a face in the crowd, and though it was not actually Clarence, it had the same sort of round, sweet appeal. It was just as petrified as Clarence would have been in this situation.

Player threw an arm across Hero’s path. The man stopped, looks at Player, then glared back up at Gaimon.

“Leave it,” Player said, “it’s not that bad.”

Hero growled. It was an animal noise that rose out of his chest and rumbled in his throat. Player could feel the vibration in the fingers of his outstretched hand. For one moment, he thought Hero was going to launch himself at Gaimon, PVP or no PVP, but Hero turned away. The white eyes were narrowed in disgust at the whole situation.

He put his sword on his back and looked down at Player. He reached out and turned Player’s head, examining the damage.

Player tensed, fighting the urge to pull away and an equal opposite urge to lean into the touch. 

Hero’s frown deepened until it was the defining characteristic of his face, drawing attention away from his handsomely rugged features. Player knew he was never going to unsee the expression. He closed his eyes to block it out, preferring Hero’s predatory smile.

The man’s grip loosened, became almost gentle, and Player opened his eyes again. Hero was looking at Gaimon again, and the muscles in his right forearm were standing out, his fist clenched. His left hand was still supporting Player’s chin.

Hero said something under his breath that could not possibly be in English. It didn’t even sound like a European language. Player supposed that it might have been Asian--it had that syllabic broken sound, but he didn’t have the ear to really tell.

Whatever the language, the meaning was obvious. Hero was going to savage Gaimon the first chance he got. It was a promise.

Gaimon looked suitably terrified. 

Player felt Hero’s hand move on his head, still cupping his chin, restricting movement. He was still frozen under the touch, and now he went completely rigid. Hero’s thumb was running idly over the skin under his jaw.

Player’s eyes flicked left and right, trying to see who might be watching this. No one was looking at Hero’s hand. Player let himself relax with a shiver. The touch felt good, and it was leaving tingling trails across his skin.

“Stop!” Something inside of head screamed, “Stop it right now! Don’t you know that this is wrong?!” He fought down the returning urge to jerk away.

He didn’t have to, because at that exact moment the countdown bell sounded and Hero flinched away. A few seconds later, before Player could really get his breath back, the lobby blinked out of existence and was replaced by one of the survival games arenas.

Player closed his eyes, heaving deep breaths and trying to ignore the stench of fecal matter that still clung to him. Teleporting hadn’t gotten rid of the mess on his face.  _ Or on Gaimon’s hand _ , he thought and looked around for the boy. Gaimon was peeling off a leather glove, looking distasteful but not disgusted. Too bad.

“Let’s just run for it,” Hero suggested from beside him.

Player reacted, as he always did, by flinching. He never expected to actually be spoken to.

“Don’t try to clean up,” Hero said, because Player’s hand had risen to the side of his face again, “you’ll just end up smearing it all over yourself.”

Player fought down a gag and nodded mutely.

Hero turned his head away from the center and looked at Player. His diamond armor was gleaming with the sheen of enchantments, and it lent him an aura of power. He looked like a demigod straight out of Greek mythology.

Player hated himself for noticing. He had some kind of fecal matter smeared on his face and was about to play one of his least favorite games, and all he could think about was how Hero looked. He felt pitifully insignificant standing next to the gladiator.

Hero smirked at Player, just long enough to be registered, and then he looked forward again. “Almost time,” he said.

Player felt his stomach flip over. He really needed to get more control of himself. That kind of reaction wasn’t just unhealthy, it was unnatural. He hated himself for it all over again.

The countdown dinged audibly down from 5, and Player readied himself. He took the bow off of his back and removed one of his arrows from the quiver, but he didn’t prepare to shoot. He didn’t have anyone to shoot at. 

The starting horn went off, and the players jumped into motion. Most of them, including Gaimon and Ivy, ran straight for the middle.

Hero grabbed Player by the upper arm and hauled him two steps away from the center before letting go. It shook the fluff from his head, as it was meant to, and just like that Player was back into the Game.

His blood rose, adrenaline flushed his system as fear thrilled through him. Maybe this was why there’s pain in the game: after a while without it, losing and winning would have become meaningless to anyone but the Gladiators.

This map was partly forested, and Hero lead them offroad. He was flitting through the trees in front of Player, the blue gleam of his armor lending an ethereal quality to it. He moved quietly for his size and very dexterously.  _ Gladiator _ , Player thought,  _ right down to the core. _ And not one of the big bumbling idiots either, not cannon fodder. 

Hero pulled up sharply, interrupting Player’s train of thought and almost causing a collision. Player danced back a few steps.

Hero was peering out between the branches of a tree that, like all the trees, was a little too square. There were a couple of little houses in a clearing in front of them. One of them was only partially intact.

Hero spent several seconds watching the two houses, then he turned his head to look at Player out of the corner of one eye.

“Come on,” he said, “and be quick.” He broke from the trees and ran for the intact house.

Player paused to take one deep, half-exasperated breath and then dashed after him. He reached the house almost two seconds after Hero and ducked into the door. Hero closed the door behind him with a thump. 

The sudden silence, the warmth of the trapped air in the building, and the rapid slowing of his pulse made Player relax almost against his will.

He raised his hand to his face again, a reflexive response to the sticky patch on his cheekbone.

“Don’t,” Hero warned again, more sharply this time, “watch out the windows.”

Hero had gone into some kind of panic mode or something, and Player didn’t want to push him. He still remembered the easy way that the man beat him on that first day. It was just sparring then. Player couldn’t imagine being the receiver of an unblunted sword from Hero.

Player half-sat on a table so that his eyes were level with the window. He set both hands on the bow in his lap. His right hand settled on the string and the end of the arrow. He stroked the feather fletching idly.

Player took the opportunity to glance around. It was a neat, manufactured space. Two neat side tables, one of which Player was leaning on, a sofa and armchair, a dining table with a red tablecloth and a small potted flower. That was about it.

He looked back out the window. Nothing was moving in the trees or on the thin road, but this was a large map.

Hero reentered. “Backdoor is taken care of,” he said, not really to Player. Then he moved to the dining table. 

Player turned his head slightly more than necessary to look at him. There was a brown shape next to his left eye socket that was blocking part of his peripheral vision.

Hero was fingering the tablecloth. He unslung the sword from his back and used the tip of it to slice off a corner of the cloth. It was a slow, careful movement. He ripped the last two inches of cloth with his hands.

Player watched, slightly confused, as Hero produced a bottle from his inventory. It held water that was just a little bluer than normal. Hero pulled out the cork and tipped the bottle to wet the cloth.

Player suddenly remembered that they weren't supposed to keep their inventories when they go into the games. Something else that Hero seemed oblivious of.

Hero tested how damp the cloth is with two fingers. Player checked the view out the window again. Still nothing.

Hero said, “hold still,” right next to him.

Player flinched away on instinct, and Hero seized his chin again so he could do his job properly. Player’s shoulders tensed. He was uptight again, no longer soothed by the atmosphere of the little house. Hero pressed the square of tablecloth to the side of Player’s face. It smelled faintly of sulfur and brimstone, smells that he was not familiar with. 

Player closed one eye and shivered while Hero cleaned Gaimon’s missile off him. He could feel the calluses on Hero’s palm under his chin, and it was distracting. He shuffled in place, trying to squirm away.

“Stay still,” Hero said again and closed the space again. Player could hear the disgust in his voice, and the scrubbing with the cloth redoubles. The hand on his chin shifted, changed the angle so Hero could see what needed to be done.

Player watched sideways out of the window with his eye that was still open. His face felt hot, and it wasn’t because of the friction of the cloth or residual adrenaline. 

Hero gave him one last look over, using the tips of his fingers under Player’s chin to angle his head. He gave a little grunt of satisfaction and flicked the cloth to the other side of the room. Player opened his eye and watched Hero inspect his own hands for any smudges. 

He checked out the window again rather than make eye contact. Still no movement anywhere nearby.

“That bastard really screwed you up, huh?”

Player blinked his and made eye contact for the first time. “What?”

“Well, somebody did,” Hero said, “and the monkey is the only one I can think of.”

Player’s eyes suddenly went wide, “You don’t think it was his own...do you?”

“No,” Hero said, “definitely not.”

“Oh,” Player pulled back fractionally on the bowstring in his lap. He looked back out the window.

“See, there you go again, disconnecting.” Hero was a little too close for comfort, and he didn’t show any signs of stepping backward. Player suddenly wished that he would reach out again, but he knew that he wouldn’t. 

Maybe Player really did belong at the other end of the cafeteria, at the tables where almost everyone was paired with someone of the same sex. He hated the idea that he might, but he wasn’t really sure why.

Unobserved by Player, Hero reached out, pulled back, and then clenched his teeth. He gingerly took the leather helmet off Player’s head, in the guise of looking for any more smears of brown. He made a little concerned noise in the back of his throat. 

Player felt the change, but he put it down to exactly what Hero intended. Then he feels a rough hand in his hair, tousling it against the sweat that was built up under the helmet.

“If it wasn’t the shit flinging idiot,” said Hero’s voice, “it was somebody else who screwed you up.” What he meant was, “Somewhere along the line, someone told you that who you are isn’t a good thing to be, and they lied to you,” but Player didn’t hear that. He flashed on Clarence, and fear enters his mind again, fear of Hero. He didn’t know what was going to happen if Hero came face-to-face with the farmer.

Hero didn’t move his hand, now concerned with actually inspecting the helmet. It was a little worn, a little weathered, and it didn’t look like Player’s craftsmanship at all. Hero had been poking around their little suite enough to know that. In fact, he’d found a set of leather armor that Player must have made tucked away in a chest. The stitches on that helmet were much neater, much more regular than this one. More evidence that these games were completely separate from the life that Player and the others lived inside their little dormitory compound.

Beneath his hand, Player’s face was heating up again. He was afraid, yes, but the combination of fear, Hero’s hand on his head, and thinking about Clarence was doing something very strange to his anatomy. He shifted the bow backward a few more inches.

“Shouldn’t we move?” He asked, “find some weapons, fight someone?”

Hero’s face flickered from its half-fond pensive expression to one of uncertainty. “Just let them deal with each other,” he said, “it won’t make a difference. When we get out there, you just hang back, at least until we find you some good armor.” To Player’s great relief, the man removed his hand and set the leather helmet back in place. Hero straightened it.

Something moved outside the window. A muffled scream came from the forest, more of a startled scream than anything born of pain or fear. Player watched three figures careen across the road. Hero bent down and caught sight of them. He muttered something about the back door and left the room again.

Player let out a groan. His body was beginning to grow tired with the rapid emotional transitions: fear to pleasure to uncertainty to pleasure and back to fear. His head was starting to ache, and Player suspects that this was just the beginning of his discomfort. He opened his inventory, looking for anything edible. Which he didn’t have because his inventory was wiped clean. He should have given the apples from breakfast to the white-eyed man to carry around.

Hero came back into the room at a run. He hit Player and grabbed him around the waist. Player dropped his bow. For one confused second, he thought it was some kind of advance. 

Something exploded in the back room of the little cottage, the concussion blast turned one of the wood plank blocks into a rain of deadly shards. Player felt them dig into his exposed arms. Hero’s armor took most of the damage, and then Player’s head took the force of their landing on the floor.

Hero rolled off him and dragged him upright in the same movement. “Go,” he said, “out the door, right now.”

Player was seeing double and triple. His head was ringing from the explosion and the impact. He was vaguely aware of people yelling from the back room of the cottage as he fumbled on the floor for his bow. He founds it and turned to face whatever threat this was. 

Hero gave him a shove towards the door, “Go, I’m right behind you.”

Player didn’t believe him, and he was suddenly very reluctant to leave Hero behind here. It was a small space. There wasn’t a lot of room for Hero’s style of fighting. “No,” he said.

Hero glanced at him and nodded very slightly. Then he grabbed Player’s elbow and dragged him out the door.

Player’s first instinct was to flee, but Hero didn’t even glance at the open road. He left Player by the side of the house and looped around back. Player followed a few seconds later, much more cautiously.

Hero had vanished, but that was to be expected. He probably climbed onto the roof. There were 5 people in the back of the little house, all of them looking nervous. Player didn’t know any of them. He was quietly surprised that a team so large could hold itself together. Before this partner thing, it wouldn’t have happened. Player realized that what he was really looking at was two and a half participants. By that logic, he was only half a person.

The second half of the third team came out of the cottage, shaking his head. “No one there,” he said.

“They probably went out the front,” one of the others replied.

Which was when Hero dropped down into the middle of them. 

There was a single moment of silence, and then all hell broke loose. Player blinked and missed most of it. When his eyes opened again, Hero was pulling his sword out of the last person.

They waited for the last body to dissolve, and then Hero flicked his sword. “Come get your armor,” he says, and Player stepped out from the side of the cottage. 

Hero pointed out a set of iron armor to him and walked in circles around the area while Player changed. He kept one eye on the woods and one on Player. 

Player put the iron helmet on his head and straightened up. Hero pressed a stone sword into his hand.

“Let’s go,” He said.

Player stayed quiet for a couple of seconds, then said, “that team was big.”

Hero glanced back, “I’ve seen bigger.”

“When?” Player asked, and then said, “well…factions count I guess. That’s different though.”

“Six isn’t that many.”

“But in a survival game where every man is for themselves, with their backs turned all the time to whoever is on their team?”

Hero turned his head, “Good point.” Then he made a deep guttural growl and yanked his hand back from a tree branch. He put a finger in his mouth and sucked on it.

Player’s gut squirmed uncomfortably. He stuttered for a few seconds before saying, “It’s just weird.”

Hero hummed around his finger, agreeing. He pulled it out of his mouth, wincing as he does so. “Got a theory?”

“No,” Player lied. He thought it was because of Hero. Hero had been upsetting the status quo, slaughtering everyone whether he should be able to or not. Any kind of change in behavior must be because of Hero.

Hero was leading them farther into the forest, off the beaten track. He seemed to be trying to avoid the other participants in the game. It was abnormal for Him. Usually, he ran right into the fights. Something was different. Was it just Player, or did Hero’s eyes look a little brighter than usual?

“You know, 6 people is how many are required to start the deathmatch,” Player said, simply to break the silence.

Hero shushed him. He was looking through the trees into another clearing, this one containing a larger house. Player leaned around him to look. All was still.

Hero tilted his head towards Player, “You ready?”

Player nodded, and he didn’t fall behind when they moved this time. 

Hero threw open the door to the house and did a quick inspection of each room. Player followed behind, his back to Hero and facing the door they came through. When they were done, both of them relaxed, and they chose a lower-level room.

Hero leaned on one side of the kitchen table, and Player took the other. They were each looking at one door to the room.

“Are they going to find us here?” Player asked.

Hero took a long second to respond. “Eventually,” he said, “if their teams don’t break down and kill each other. If they do break, then we’ll be into the deathmatch.

“Can we make it through the deathmatch?”

Hero snorted, “Please.”

Player realized he had asked the wrong question. Of course, Hero would be fine: he could fight. Player was the one who was in trouble. He was completely depending on Hero to watch his back. 

Player caught something moving out of the corner of his eye. He leaned back into Hero, angling his head downwards. “I’ve got something.”

Hero twisted around and looks out the window, “Six more. You know any of them?”

Player shook his head. 

“Well, that was quick,” Hero stood up. He twisted left and right, stretching, “Let’s go get them.”

Player took his weight off the table. He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably under the heavy iron armor. He flexed his hand on the bow, took a breath. He was trembling slightly with adrenaline. It was probably best to just stand back.

Hero stepped past him and pulled open the door. He walked outside, not making any sort of secret of his intentions.

Player noted that Hero miscounted; there were only 5 people on the team. It was two gladiators, a woman who looked like a farmer, and two other people who were either woodsmen or miners. Still, only two and a half teams. It struck him as odd that Hero would miss something like that.

Player ducked out of the door after Hero, ready to at least do his part with the bow. He could hit one or two, maybe. His aim was pretty good.

Something dropped out of a tree to Player’s left and hit the ground hard. He turned to face it and saw the third gladiator, already running at him.

Player yelped, already drawing back on the bow. He released the arrow, and it went whistling over the gladiator’s shoulder. 

Player hated himself for some fraction of a second, and then he was scrambling back frantically, trying to go for the stone sword. He got it off his back, dropped his bow, and brought it up in front of him. 

The gladiator slammed into him. Player braced the flat of the sword with his forearm to withstand the force of the blow. His vision was starting to go blurry with panic. His body was locking up.

The gladiator disengaged but didn’t step away. He slashed sideways across Player’s body, mostly hitting the armor. The tip of his sword found the gap between the chest plate and leggings, and pain seared through Player’s stomach. He stumbled back again and snapped out of the paralysis. 

Hero was halfway through his first step toward them, a look on his face between anger and uncertainty. He didn’t seem to be in any amount of hurry.

Player tried to hit back, slashing the sword up, aiming for his opponent’s neck. The gladiator blocked, stepped in, and thrust the sword through Player’s stomach, finding the weak spot in the armor with practiced ease.

Pain slammed through Player’s nerves, jerking his body. He blinked down at the sword.

Hero sighed, his shoulders moving in a shrug. Then he stabbed the gladiator in the back of the neck. The blade went all the way through and came out the front along with a veritable fountain of blood.

“You weren’t kidding about being terrible with a sword,” Hero said conversationally.

Player scowled as his body dissolves. He could feel the sword grating against his ribcage as it slid out of his body at an angle. Then there was no body for the sword to slide out of, and Player was spectating.

He turned his back to Hero and sat cross-legged in the air, fuming.

He heard the deathmatch countdown start, ticking fast because there were only 5 players left.

It sped up, sped up again.

Player looked behind him. Hero was massacring what remained of the team, easy as you please. Player rolled his eyes and sighed. They weren’t even going to make it to deathmatch.

They didn’t, but it was a close thing. Hero managed to take the head off the last player less than half a second before he was teleported. Instead of the deathmatch, there was a moment where the game shuddered in confusion.

Then they were back in the lobby, and Player was looking up from the crowd at where Hero stood on the pedestal. He smiled slightly as Hero jumped down.

The man pushed through the crowd to Player, ignoring the people who wanted to talk to him.

“We’re going to have to work on that.” His eyes were still glowing more light than usual. It was making Player a little nervous.

“Practice will help you,” Hero continued, “if you want to get better.”

Player nodded, suddenly relieved that the reaction isn’t, “stay the hell out of my way in the future.” He pulled himself together, pushing away the anger and self-hatred for the moment. 

“That would be good,” he said and left it at that.

“Hey!” Someone yelled from across the room.

Player looked around, but Hero didn’t. 

Gaimon was storming up to them, bristling, his armor scuffed and dirty, grass stains down one leg. He looked furious, and Player couldn’t imagine why. They hadn't seen him at all during the game. 

“I figured it out,” Gaimon said, his voice cutting through the crowd, “I know why Player is such a whiny, sneaky, little bitch.”

Player could feel something stirring in the back of his head, a memory tugging at him. He swallowed against nausea.

“Do you hear me?!” Gaimon yelled. Everyone looked away, carrying on their own conversations in hushed voices.

“Well,” Gaimon turned to look at Player, “got anything to say for yourself?”

“I...I don’t know what you’re--” Player stuttered.

“Faggot,” Gaimon said.

“Pardon?” Player tried to calm himself down in vain.

“You heard me,” Gaimon said, “I can’t believe I actually sat next to you. It’s disgusting.”

Player felt his face heating up, “I am not,” he said quietly.

“Oh you definitely are,” Gaimon went on, jabbing his finger at Player, “you’re practically drooling over poor Hero here. I can’t imagine he enjoys it.”

Player glanced at Hero. His eyes were glowing very bright, practically as bright as the sun. He didn’t say anything.

“Well,” Gaimon said, snapping Player’s attention back, “what do you have to say for yourself, you pussy?”

“Uh…” Player’s eyes darted around the room. He could feel himself flushed with red-hot shame. That memory was starting to form in his head.  _ I’m going to hell,  _ he thought, suddenly and without context.

“Well?” Gaimon asked, “How about this: do you like taking it up the a--”

Hero moved. He took one step forward and brought his sword around, twisting his wrist. He slammed the point into Gaimon’s chest. It went through the iron armor like butter and shattered the boy’s sternum.

Player took an involuntary step back. He’d seen people killed in the game before, but this felt different. Gaimon wasn’t dissolving, wasn’t fighting back, wasn’t even looking down at the sword.

The boy’s eyes were glassy and unseeing. He tried to breathe and instead coughed up blood. It spattered Player’s face and neck.

Hero bore down on the sword, forcing it out Gaimon’s back. He forced his body backward until Gaimon was held up by nothing except the sword.

In a room across the facility from 4979, an alarm began to blare. The body inside the chamber began to shudder and thrash.

A woman screamed.

Player backed up a little more, growing more confused by the second. Gaimon should have been dissolving, should be turning to black snow, but he wasn’t.

The boy tried to pull the sword out of him but only succeeded in lacerating his palms. All his muscles were straining as he used the last of his energy to fight against the sword.

Hero was grinning, “Idiots,” he said and twisted the sword ninety degrees. Gaimon tried to scream, but his lungs were shredded now. All he succeeded in doing was causing a sudden waterfall of blood out of the puncture wound.

“Just set me loose,” Hero growled, “with all these minds in here with me, just begging to die.”

“Hero?” Player said, his voice very small.

“Shut it,” Hero said, but he didn’t sound angry.

“Seizure, we’ve got a seizure, heart rate is over 240 with palpitations. We’re gonna lose him!”

“Somebody get the defibrillator!”

“Hero,” Player said again, “what are you doing?”

Everyone in the lobby was looking at them, most edging backward slowly.

“Killing him,” Hero answered flatly.

A couple of people slipped quietly out of the exit, then a couple more. All at once, there was a mad silent rush to get out of the lobby with everyone scrambling over each other as fast as they could.

Player forced himself to stay where he was, even though everything in him was screaming to run away. “He’ll just respawn you know, in a couple of days.”

“No, he won’t,” Hero snarled. He wasn’t looking at him, but Player could imagine the twisted look on his face, far beyond the frown from earlier.

Player got it then, and he swallowed hard. The urge to run redoubled, but he fought it down. “It wasn’t a big deal,” he said, “he’s just a bully.”

Hero snarled.

“I don’t think it’s worth killing him over.”

Even though Hero had his face turned away, Player saw the edges of the grin that spread across it. “Too late,” Hero said, and his voice had a strange harmonic quality, like three people all speaking at once.

The machines were still blaring, but the people in the room were standing still, looking at the body before them.

“Time of death, 10:17 am,” one of them said, and wiped their face with one sticky hand. “Shut it down.”

“But sir--”

“Shut the damn thing down! We’re going to plan B.”

Hero pulled up on the sword, removing it from Gaimon’s body. Blood was starting to pool around it, spreading outwards.

Player waited in vain for the body to dissolve. He stared at the blank eyes and bloody mouth, and suddenly vomit was trying to work into his throat.

Hero straightened up and turned around to look at Player, who took a staggering step back.

Hero sighed and held out one bloody hand to him. The light in his eyes was dimming, fading. “This is goodbye,” he said.

Player frowned, “What? Why?”

Hero smiled, just barely, “I can’t explain. Can I have a handshake before I go?”

Player stepped forward and took Hero’s hand. It was warm, slightly sticky from the blood.

Hero pulled him in suddenly, wrapped his other arm around Player’s back.

“You’d better start looking for the End of this game,” Hero said, “the sooner you find it, the better. Good luck.” 

And then Hero was gone, and so was Player.


	17. A Brief Interlude

Dr. Janus Dane stood looking down into the capsule that held the body. She observed the tubes and wires, the pads and electrical equipment, the rough scars on its sides and chest.

“A car crash?” she asked.

Mr. Hipler nodded, “Both drivers were intoxicated, according to the reports. I still think it was the alcohol that knocked him out, not the impact.”

She leaned over the open top of the capsule, her fingers slipping slightly as she touched the glass. It was slick with clear fluid. 

The boy had not died easily. He had shaken and writhed and thrown up waves in the liquid that his body was suspended in. He had struggled for breath against the tubes, battered his heart against his ribs, and then that heart had simply stopped beating. Half an hour ago, he had been perfectly healthy. As healthy as a person could be while comatose, that was. It defied logical explanation. Luckily, Dr. Dane wasn’t especially logical, even if she had only called a halt to her mental trigonometry a few seconds earlier.

“It doesn't make any sense,” Mr. Hipler was saying, pulling at his own hair and rubbing his neck.

The woman smiled, “It does.”

A monitor on the wall beeped at a different tone than the rest of the alarms, and Mr. Hipler looked at it. He sighed, looked back down, “They’re resetting the game. Plan B is being initiated.”

Ordinarily, Dr. Dane would have been very interested to know what Plan B was. Right then, all she wanted to do is get her hands on the thing inside the program (metaphorically. It’s very hard to actually hold a being of pure energy in your hand). She looked around, located the nearest screen, and said to it “System?”

Text instantly appeared on the screen, “Yes, Dr. Dane?”

Mr. Hipler started, “I’ve never seen it do that before.”

She ignored him, “Where is the anomaly now?”

“0000 is asleep,” the screen read, “imprisoned within the code.”

Dr. Dane blinked at it. “Can you wake him up?”

“Not without allowing him access to the game.”

The man who had tried to revive the body in the capsule pushed past her. “Forget waking it up: just delete it.”

The screen flickered, the circuits hummed. Dr. Dane’s heart jumped into her mouth. 

The screen showed text again, “unable to delete 0000. This action is denied by file…” And here the screen displayed a long complicated string of numbers and characters ending in a file type that no one in the room recognized: .ttf.

The man cursed for a minute, then left the room. He was visibly depressed.

Dr. Dane went back to the screen. “What can we do with 0000?”

“Wake him up or leave him where he is,” The system said, “those are the only two acceptable options.”

She stopped, sighed. She sat down in a chair.

A woman screamed in the hallway, a sound of loss and pain and rage. The grieving mother.

Mr. Hipler and Dr. Dane both flinched.

The woman turned back to the screen. “We’ll talk about logistics in a few hours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be updating with the remaining chapters from Fanfiction.net very soon, but I'll leave a note here in the meantime.
> 
> If you want to see more of my work, or if you want to show your appreciation, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi and checking out my (extremely basic) website: https://mquinnalmond.wixsite.com/amquinnwriting.
> 
> I'm retired from writing Fanfiction, but I'm writing original fiction and essays now. Some are boring because they're academic, but some are pretty interesting. You can find information and links on the site above.
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of this fanfiction.


	18. Plan B

“Well, on the bright side we still have micromovements.”

“Yes. On the downside, there’s a dead kid in the building and the game is being shut down and families are going to be banging down the doors.”

“No, they won’t. They all signed the waivers and read the agreements.”

“I don’t want to give this one back to them anyway. Have you listened to them, I mean really listened?”

“Yes, I have. I thought Puritans were extinct.”

“You’ve never been to the bible belt. Poor kid. I feel for him.”

* * *

Even before Player woke up, he knew where he was. He could feel the grass, and sunlight, and the solidity of a tree. He was in the open world.

He opened his eyes and immediately threw up a hand to block out the sunlight. It was brilliantly, vibrantly bright, brighter than any sunlight he could ever remember seeing before.

Slowly he lowered his hand. He gazed up at the oak tree above his head, down at the grass beneath him. Player took a slow breath of cool sharp air and closed his eyes. He opened them again, blinked at a nearby poppy.

He felt himself flush to almost the same shade of red as the reality of the last day settled onto him. Hero had killed Gaiman, killed him outright and with no provocation, stabbed him through the chest, and now Gaiman and Hero were both gone.

Player shook himself; they were not gone, merely despawned. Hero was probably waking up in their rooms right now, as strangely sore as Player was and twice as irritated. Gaiman would be… Well… 

Gaiman was dead. Player had seen death once before, and he knew what it looked like. Number 4980 had not been particularly close to Player, but he had been his neighbor, and one day they had both come out of their rooms and--

Player got to his feet. The thing did not bear thinking about. He looked around, then reached into his pocket. The inventory grid popped open in front of him.

All his stuff was gone. Player frowned, reached for his pick. It wasn’t there. For two heartbeats he was puzzled, and then he was panicked. He felt over his own back, fumbled his own shirt. There was nothing.

He tried to return to the lobby, first by verbal command, “Warp, compound,” then by physical command, then finally, slightly frantically, by thought. That method never worked, even when the game was fully functional.

Player stopped trying to return to the compound. He looked at his hands, empty and shaking, the tough patches where the tools bit into his palm. He closed them into fists, the dirt under his nails, then opened them, the whirls on his fingers. They were familiar hands, good hands, he knew that. They were capable hands, and he liked them.

Player looked up again, and suddenly he knew what he had to do. “Just like it all began,” he said to himself and looked at the tree had woken up against. He touched it gently, rubbed the rough bark with the flat of his hand. He turned away from it, bent to touch the poppy. It was such a bright red. Had colors ever been this vivid before?

Player straightened up and listened, his head cocked to the left. He breathed, tasting the cool fresh shards of air. He could feel, in the air, a certain wetness, maybe a swamp or an ocean. Some kind of moisture nearby, that was for sure. That was important: he would need water later.

Player took another breath and began to wander towards the smell of water. He walked over the next hill, and nearly fell into a neat little lake. He knelt and opened up his inventory, remembered that he had no possessions any longer and closed it again with an impatient gesture. He scooped up a palm-full of water and gulped it down. It was clean and clear. The liquid sat heavy and smooth in his stomach.

Player dipped his hands again, rubbed them together, slid them over his brow and the back of his neck. He stood. There were things he had to do. There were processes, steps to be made.

He turned, chose a tree at random, walked to it. He knocked on the tree, then pulled back and hit the tree hard. Immediately he doubled up, wincing and cradling his hand. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work. 

Eventually, he straightened up and touched the tree. He tapped it: nothing happened. He smacked it with an open palm: nothing happened. He slipped an arm around the trunk and pulled at it. The block popped out of the tree and landed on his stomach. 

Player gasped for a moment. He grabbed the block and forced it down to size, popped it into his inventory. He sat up and massaged his chest.

“This is not going to be easy,” He said to no one in particular. He got up, stretched up on his toes and pulled hard on the next block on wood. It came down vertically, onto the stump of the tree beneath it, and he popped it down to size.

Player stood on the stump and jumped straight up, yanked down the next block up, fell onto his back on the grass, popping it down on his way. The impact knocked the breath out of him anyway, and he thumped his head down into the dirt. He heaved in a painful lungful of air, and when he let it out it was a laugh. He sat up and opened his inventory without standing up. In a moment, he had a crafting table. Then he stood, set it down, made an axe.

He used the axe to pull down the final block of wood in the tree, then the block off the ground. 

He fiddled with the crafting table while he waited for the leaves to fall apart. He made himself a pickaxe and a few sticks in preparation for torches. Then a small seed fell from the leaves and landed at his feet. He picked it up, crouched and bent to dig a small hole. He placed the seed in it, pushed dirt over it, stood back and watched a little green shoot work its way out of the grass.

Player stood, used his ax to pick up the crafting table and put it away. He looked around.

“Well, I have to start somewhere,” Player said. He looked around, knowing what he was looking for.

Over a year beforehand, Player had gone through a phase. It had directly followed 4980’s death, and it was probably because of it. Player had gone out into the open world, made himself a faction, claimed a few plots of land, and built himself a neat little house. It was the only thing he had ever built for himself at the time, and it wasn’t particularly good-looking, but it was his. After 4980, he needed something that was his. He had lived there happily for a couple of months, and then he had realized his mistake. 

He had built his house in a plain, flat for miles and miles around, no hills or trees. It had… Disturbed him. After a while digging through solid stone he’d gotten fed up. He unclaimed the land cleaned put his chests and moved. 

The second house was much better, tucked against a cliff in thick forest. There were caves nearby and animals in the trees, wolves and chickens and sheep. Player had stayed there for several months more, thought about staying there forever.

He hadn’t stayed there forever. One day he had come back and his house and everything for a mile around had been on fire. The trees were leafless, the trunks and branches aflame. The grass was already gone, reduced to black ash. 

Player had acted fast, saved most of his belongings, at least the important things. After that, he had given up, moved back into the complex. 

The point was: Player knew what he needed in a house. He knew the kind of terrain he liked, what his usage of wood and stone would be, even how big of a space he would need for the foundations. So, Player looked around and decided that this spot wouldn’t work.

He let his eyes focus farther out, on the horizon. There were hills on the distance, gray and stony. The other way was a dense, dark forest, thick and promising. Even from that far away, Player liked the look of the wood. He didn’t like the shadows under the leaves, but he could deal with monsters. The forest and the mountains were probably within walking distance from each other.

Player walked. He traced the edge of the mountain, hopping over stony outcroppings and slipping on gravel spills. Eventually, he came to a place where he could clearly see the edge of the dark forest from a rise. Below him, a river separated the two biomes, and in front of him was a short flat expanse of ground bordered by woods, the regular kind.

Player took a deep breath and turned slowly in a circle. This was the place. He could see at least four different biomes if he didn’t count the river, and that was just in this one spot. If he scouted around he could probably find everything he needed within a day’s walk from here.

The sun was just beginning its descent to the horizon. Player shielded his eyes from the glare and squinted towards the dark forest. He could probably make it there and fell a tree or two in the remaining daylight, but there was no way he was going to make it back before nightfall, and he didn’t know what would happen if he died to mobs trying to get to safety. He didn’t particularly want to know.

If he was going to be safe tonight, he would need somewhere to sleep. That was the first priority. He would worry about food in the morning. He would worry about everything in the morning. If he didn’t work fast he wouldn’t be alive to see it. Time enough to think everything over when he had a roof over his head.

Player bounded down the hill onto solid ground and did a quick walk about the area. He found what he was looking for less than 30 blocks away: a shallow indent in the mountainside, barely enough to expose stone. It was perfect.

He used his new wooden pick to carve a short tunnel into the mountain itself then create a little stone room. By that time the wretched thing was almost broken, and he broke it over his knee with a snort of contempt. He would use the pieces for fuel later, he decided and dumped them into a corner.

Player set the crafting table against the wall, grunting slightly with the weight of it. He stood and gathered the cobblestone from the floor He would need it, either to make tools or to craft into bricks for building. He went ahead and made himself a new pick, this one stone.

“We’re getting somewhere,” Player said to himself, turning the pick in the dim light. He stood and moved back down the short tunnel. The sun was almost at the horizon now. He didn’t have long, but he wasn’t going to make it 10 minutes in the dark without light.

Player stepped into the open and looked around again. There was a glow in the treeline nearby that he was pretty sure was lava, but he definitely did not want lava in an enclosed space. He jogged up the hill again, looked around. There were some holes in the plain below him, probably indicating ravines of deep holes, but he didn’t have the time or ability to deal with those things right then.

Player turned, scanned the sheer side of the distant mountain. There was a cluster of coal ore just above the ground. That was what he needed. He turned, judged the sun’s position again, and started running.

He was grateful for Hero’s influence on him now. Compared to all the exercise he’d been getting in the daily games this kind of sprint was nothing. He reached the mountain a little out of breath but with adrenaline pumping in his system. He was going to cut it close, maybe not make it at all. It was going to come down to how fast he could get up to where the coal was.

Player worked fast, but the stone pick was slower than he was used to and the stone seemed weak and crumbly. He carved himself a staircase more slowly than he would have liked, but eventually, he reached the coal ore. By then the sun was dangerously close to touching the distant trees, and he knew that there were going to be patches of shadow on the way back to his little bunker dark enough to have mobs in them. He broke a few blocks of the coal ore and carefully gathered up the resulting powdery black lumps, trying not to get any on his clothes and failing. Ordinarily, he would have spared a moment to curse, but the oncoming darkness was more of a concern.

Player took one piece of coal and opened his inventory to make torches. The lump was large enough to make four, and that used all of his sticks. He took the smallest of them and struck it against a rough patch of stone, like a match. It would have to do: he had no flint or steel.

The torch caught, barely. Player blew gently on it, and the flame grew. He was fairly sure that that method or igniting coal did not work outside of the game, but he won’t complain about the inaccuracy.

Now he had light, for all the good it would do him. He would need a fire to keep the monsters away at least.

Player leaped down his makeshift staircase and hurried back towards his little cave. Behind him, he heard the forlorn groaning of zombies and rattling of skeletons.

Player skidded into the tunnel to his little room on his knees, like a baseball player sliding into home base. He skinned his palm on the way in, but right then he didn’t care. He opened his inventory and used a block of cobblestone to stop the advance of the zombie on his heels. He stood with a groan, poked at the undead thing with his torch, aiming to catch its shirt on fire. He did, and the fabric caught with a whoosh. The smell went from rotting meat to cooking meat, and Player allowed himself a small smile while the zombie turned into so much ash.

An arrow whizzed by his head, and Player dropped back to the ground. He crawled back into his safe room, around into a corner where they could not possibly see him. He waited there for several minutes, cupping the torch to dim its light until the sounds of the skeleton faded away.

He dropped his hand with a sigh, removed another torch from his inventory and lit it off the first one. He placed both on the walls, both far enough away so that ashes wouldn’t fall on him.

Player took a deep breath. He was starting to feel hunger gnawing at his insides, but it was too late to find food now. He was going to have to wait until morning. He rolled over on the hard stone and did his best to fall asleep.


	19. The Real Beginning

Dr. Janus Dane was sitting on a chair in 4979’s room. The technicians were gone for the moment. She was looking down at the sleeping face. His eyes were moving rapidly back and forth behind the lids like he was in REM sleep.

“System,” she said, “where is 0000 now?”

The little screen above the bed flickered to life, “He is asleep.”

“Where?”

“In the cell prepared for him long ago, beneath the center of the open world.”

She sat for a long time, thinking about that. “Would you advise waking him up?”

The system did not respond immediately. The room hummed at a slightly higher volume for a moment. “The cell is secure.”

Dr. Dane nodded.

* * *

For Player, the days turned into a desperate scramble for survival. On the second day in the new world, he got up stiff and sore from the stone floor. He rolled his shoulders and neck, stretched up over his head until his spine popped back into place.

“Alright,” he said to himself, “I need a real house with a real bed.”

He gathered up his crafting table and wood blocks but left the torches where they were. He could make more of those easily enough. He hefted the stone pick and walked down the short tunnel to the block of cobblestone which he slid over, figuring it was better to leave the little safehouse barricaded.

The morning outside the cave was as brilliant as the one before, but already he could tell it was going to be much warmer. Player turned to look at the dark forest in the distance. If he had a choice, he was going to build his house out of that wood.

An arrow missed his neck by a fraction of an inch and buried itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. Player dropped flat onto the ground and rolled back into the mouth of the tunnel for cover. He banged his knee hard on the sharp stone corner and winced, but ignored the pain and sat up. He leaned around the stone wall and peeked out. There was a skeleton in the shade of a tree, taking careful exaggerated steps to keep out of the sunlight and move closer to him. It already looked a little charred.

Player hooked his new stone pick off his back and took a deep breath. He stood up and lunged out, ducking low to avoid the next arrow and close the distance between himself and the mob. The skeleton stumbled, but it was wary of stepping into the sunlight.

Player brought the pick around with enough force to smash through the mob’s ribcage and spinal cord. The skeleton came apart with a clatter and Player straightened up, breathing hard. He leaned down and seized the bow and quiver of arrows, taking the first bones of the arms with it. The bow was a little loose and not very powerful, but the arrows were straight.

Player put the bow over one shoulder and the quiver over the other. He scanned the area for other mobs and didn’t see any. 

“Okay,” he said to himself, “a house and a bed. I’m going to have to butcher a sheep or go mining for iron.” He heaved a sigh, “this is going to be such a pain.”

Player climbed up the hill again and chose where he was going to put the house. The top of the hill was flat and largely clear of brush. He marked off a spot in his mind and turned his attention back out to the dark forest in the distance. It was definitely doable.

He leaped down the hill and crossed the open plain to the forest on the far side. There was a little dip in the ground and a river at the bottom, which he splashed through. He scrabbled up the bank on the far side, ripping out tufts of soft green grass and he hauled himself up.

He selected one of the huge dark trees and took out his axe. He really hoped that this new game wasn’t completely vanilla. For one, the food would be boring. Gathering wood would also be very difficult. He swung the axe, and the whole tree came down in a shower of loose wood blocks and half-dispersed leaves. Player dove to the side and avoided most of the debris.

“I guess there are mods then,” he gasped, yanking his left hand out from beneath a pile of leaves. He got to his feet and collected the blocks of wood, popping each into his inventory. He checked after he had gathered them and found there was enough wood in one tree to build a house, especially if it was a smallish one like he planned for himself.

Ha allowed himself a little smile.

Player turned to go back to the hill on the far side of the river. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something, something red and white, bloody. He turned back towards it sharply. It was the carcass of a sheep, the wool dropping off in clumps for gathering. It was half-eaten.

He needed wool, and if he could pass up on butchering a sheep on his own he would.

Player edged stepped towards the corpse, looking left and right in case it zombies had somehow managed to pin the animal down. He didn’t see any movement, so he stepped over to the corpse and picked up three blocks of wool. That was all he needed for the moment. If he decided later he wanted a carpet or paintings he would start a herd all his own.

He stood back up and glanced around again. He wanted to be sure.

Something behind him growled, animal. Lupine.

Player turned. There was a wolf behind him. Its mouth was stained red with fresh blood presumably from the sheep.

“Easy boy,” Player said, backing up slowly. He held out his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Take it easy.”

The wolf watched him retreat, its ears still back against its head. It snarled again, and Player backed up faster.

The animal watched him for a moment, then turned back to the sheep carcass and began to eat. Player observed for a moment, then left it to it. 

He made it back to the hill without incident. It was almost noon and he was starting to feel very hungry. He had no way to get food, so he decided to hold off until near nightfall to try to find apples. He could last a while longer.

He made himself a stone shovel and used it and his pick to dig a foundation. He took the cobblestone, made a furnace, and set it making the cobblestone back into regular stone.

He was starting to tremor with hunger, and by then the sun was descending.

Player got to his feet and walked into the forest. There were chickens, too fast to catch and he had no seeds to lure them, and a few apples up in the trees.

He climbed into the trees, picked the apples, and jumped down. He ate them on the way back to his underground bunker. He made himself a bed and pushed it into the corner of the little room. It was cold in the stone room. He needed to make himself a door and a second furnace to keep it warm.

Player crawled into the bed and rolled to face that wall. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but he was tired.

The day after that, he put up the walls to the house. He worked on it all day and barely had them up by nightfall. Then, the next day, the roof, made of birchwood. He put in a smooth stone floor and moved in the necessities, left the bed where it was in the cave because it was too big to move. By the end of the week, his house was complete and he was living in it.


	20. Tell Me

“What are they doing in 4980’s room?”

“Apparently that doctor wants to talk to 0000.”

“They’re giving him a whole room?”

“I guess, technically, he is a Player.”

“But right next door to this guy? That cannot be the smart play.”

“She said something about using 4979’s data to help predict 0000. It makes a sort of sense.”

“As long as they keep him locked up, I don’t care. I don’t want this kid hurt, that’s all.”

“Me neither.”

* * *

They arrived on the eighth day. Player was sitting on a block of wood, working with a rough knife and a chunk of clay on top of the anvil. He was trying to make a bowl.

The gray clay was sticky and his hands were covered in the stuff, and it wasn’t quite working. Player balled up the clay in frustration and threw it against a tree. The gray splattered over the trunk. The wolf, which had been lurking just inside the treelines, barked at it.

“Hush, Sam,” Player told it. The wolf looked at him and wagged its tail, a remarkably tame gesture for an animal he had so far neglected to approach in any way besides leaving out occasional scraps. 

Player lifted up the bucket of water beside him and scrubbed his hands vigorously to remove the clay. He used the knife to clean under his nails, carefully.

“I don’t think I can make a bowl like that,” he said aloud, “It doesn’t seem to hold the shape very well.”

He got up and walked to the tree. Sam growled at him, but he ignored it. He touched the clay. It was extremely wet. Maybe he had worked it too much. 

“Useless now,” Player returned to the anvil and retrieved his current iron pick. He had gone through three already. He probably needed to manage his resources better even though he was finding plenty of iron in the mines. He turned to go back to the house.

They came out of the woods on the other side of the clearing then, three of them. Player didn’t know any of them personally. They were just three individuals, a woman, and two men.

For a moment they stood still, looking around in shock. Player’s heart surged and he hurried forward, almost running.

They flinched as he approached, all of them. The woman ducked behind one of the men.

“Hello!” Player shouted.

They murmured their greetings, a lot less enthusiastic than he thought they would be.

Player pulled up short, unsure of the situation. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you’re the first people I’ve seen. I didn’t know if I was the only one.”

Their eyes cleared. The man the woman had hidden behind stepped forward. He was a builder, judging by his physique, and he was largely unexceptional in appearance. Now that Player was looking closer, it appeared as though all three of them had been builders of some kind. They all had the thin strong muscles in their arms and legs from jumping and lifting, not fighting or swinging tools.

“I apologize,” the man says, “we’re all a little nervous. We’ve been walking for a week and we had a close scrape with zombies yesterday.”

Player’s eyes widened, “Did you lose someone?”

“No! No, thank Notch.”

That phrase was new to Player. Well, not new, but never heard or read outside of a book until that point. He blinked.

“Anyway, we’re trying to find a place to build a town,” The man continued.

Player nodded, “Are there enough people to support one?”

“We’ve run into a few others. It seems like everyone is here, just really spread out.”

Oh no.

When Player didn’t respond, the man went on, “You seem to have set up a nice little place.”

“It works.”

The woman finally stepped out. She squinted at the house. “Dark oak and birch? Ew.”

Player sighed, “I’m no builder.”

“Well, you evidently works well enough. You don’t even seem hungry.”

Player smiled in a self-satisfied sort of way, “I’m doing alright.” They looked hungry. They looked like they hadn’t eaten in a day at least. “Come in, I’ll find something for you. That way you won’t starve.”

They filed into the house. The three builders were very bad at concealing their distress over the aesthetics of the place, but they didn’t complain when Player pushed over a bowl of apples.

“I have some fish too,” he said, “it’s still cooking.”

“Don’t worry about us,” the man said, “we can get by.”

Player suppressed a wry laugh, “I have plenty. You should take some, just in case.” The first part was a lie: he did not have plenty. He was planning to have plenty before the end of the week, however, and his fishing rod didn’t play a very large part in that plan.

They didn’t argue anymore.

Player sat on top of the second furnace and cleaned the edge of his pickaxe of stone dust. 

“Where do you plan to put this town?” Player asked when they had stopped gobbling the apples.

“Still looking for a place.”

Player felt a prickle of apprehension, “Not near here?”

The other man shook his head. He was slightly shorter than the other one. “No. There are no plains, and we need plains.”

Player let out an internal sigh but kept his face blank, “Too bad. Let me know when you set it up.”

“What could you possibly contribute?” He snapped back.

“Troy,” The woman raised her voice slightly. Troy closed his mouth.

Instead of replying, Player crossed to a chest and produced a stack of cobblestone. He had already mapped out most of the caves and was trying to find new systems nearby. It was generating a lot of excess stone. He put the single stack into another chest and lifted the original chest up on top of the table. He tipped it on its side, allowing the contents to spill out in front of the builders.

“I assume you want big stone buildings,” Player said, “there. Take it. I have too much.”

They stared. The woman reached out and took a half stack of smooth stone in her hands. She removed a block and brought it to full size, rubbed her hand over it.

“We can’t take this…” the first man trailed off.

Player raised an eyebrow, “take it, build a town, and I’ll use your marketplace. That’s a fair trade in the long run.”

“We’ll pay you back,” the woman said.

“It’s an investment. If you don’t build a successful town, you owe me nothing.”

Troy was nodding, “That’s fair.”

The first man rose, “We’ll send word when we do. We might need even more stone than this, especially if we can find an NPC village to expand on. We’ll get word back to you somehow.”

Player remembered the fish in the furnace beside him and used the end of his pick to pull out the rack to check on it. It was almost overdone, but he figured the three builders wouldn’t turn up their noses at it. He removed it from the heat and slid it onto the top of the furnace to cool a little. “No rush,” he said to the man, “we’re all going to be here for a long time.”

“The sooner we get the communities started the better,” The woman said, “We all work better as teams.” She was gathering the resources back into the chest. She paused and looked up at Player, “I’m Prague.”

“And I’m Jericho,” The first man said.

“Player,” Player said. 

“Usually we all say our names before we sit down at someone’s table and eat all their food,” Troy said, “I’m Troy.”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone. I haven’t been looking like you. Maybe I should have.” It hit him then, like a sword to the solar plexus. Player sucked in a gasp against the sudden tightness in his chest. He missed Hero.

Prague didn’t need to ask. “I don’t know where my partner is either,” she said, “it just hits you sometimes.”

Player smiled, “I haven’t been thinking about it.”

“They’re here somewhere,” Jericho said, “we’ll find them again.”

“Does anyone else find it weird that not one single person was partnered with someone they already knew?” Troy tossed out.

“A bit,” Prague conceded, “I guess it was some kind of complex algorithm. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty close.”

Jericho laughed, “Not really perfect. I saw plenty of arguments.”

“The first thing mine did to me was throw food at me,” Troy said.

“Try getting knocked across a Survival Games lobby, then we’ll talk about it,” Player was surprised to find he was actually a little nostalgic about it, but he didn’t miss the bruises at all.

A hush fell.

“Is it true someone died?” Troy asked, looking at Player, “we heard rumors from the other group we met, but…”

Player nodded, “I was there. Someone is dead. A gladiator called Gaimon.”

“Gaimon?” Prague asked, “Wow. I thought we were going to be stuck with him around forever.”

Player blinked at her, “You knew him?”

“He was very,” she searched for the right word, “straightforward about certain things.”

Player looked at her again, closer. Was she attractive? Probably. He should probably feel attracted to her.

“They say Herobrine did it,” Troy said.

Jericho snorted.

“Herobrine?” Player asked.

“Ya, you know, big bad monster. Looks a lot like you, actually.” Troy was warming to the subject, “He’s an old story, from way back before any of us were alive. They say he’s like a virus, that he gets into your world and destroys everything you’ve built.”

“He’s supposedly a fierce fighter,” Prague took up the story, “so good that he’s never been beaten. He kills you over and over and never gets tired of it. They used to remove him from the game every time it was updated, just to keep him from spreading too fast.”

“He looks like me?” Player asked, frowning.

“Yup,” Jericho felt it was time to intervene. “Don’t pay them any mind. It was a prank by some big-shot back when the game was still being developed. He took a default skin, the one you have, and blanked out the eyes with white, set it up on doors all over his world to scare the crap out of players.”

“They say it was him,” Prague said.

“They were scared,” Jericho countered, “They saw what they wanted to see.”

Player was silent.

“We need to get moving,” Jericho said, “come on, grab that cobblestone.”

Prague gathered up the last of the resources. Troy took the fish from Player.

“We’ll send someone with a message when we’re set up,” Jericho called over his shoulder as they were leaving.

Player waved until they were out of sight. He sat down on the block of wood in front of the house and thought.

Herobrine and Hero. They couldn’t be the same person, could they? It was too cruel of a joke to play. Hero took a bit too much pleasure in killing, but that didn’t mean that he was a being whose sole purpose was to kill. And Hero had shown such kindness through the cracks, from forcing Player out of bed and into the mines to the moment before the game reset. It just didn’t make sense.

Player rested his head in his hands. The number. 0000. There was no such person, and there had been an odd number of people in the game. He should have been left out of the partner thing, but instead, he got Hero. He must have been hidden in the coding of the game, dormant, and when he was needed, he woke up. Was there another explanation?

No. There wasn’t. Not one that made more sense, anyway. Even if another human had been brought in to even out the numbers, the next logical assignment would have been 4981, not 0000. And, if that person was going to be Player’s partner, if that was the intention, they would have been female, because whatever Gaimon had said, he definitely liked women. It was a natural and normal thing. He liked women.

Player stood, satisfied by his logic. He looked at the land all around him. Well, if Herobrine was here before, if Hero was Herobrine, then he certainly wasn’t here anymore.

“Good riddance,” Player said to himself, “the self-satisfied, overpowered, sadistic Gladiator.” He rubbed at his still-aching chest.

Pushing the thoughts aside, Player turned to the more immediate problem: the builders had eaten all of his food.


	21. Isn't it Enough?

Excerpt from  _ Understanding Non-Natural Entities and Their Relationships to Humans _ , published online by Benjamin D. Pond in 2023.

The non-natural entity that most humans are familiar with is the Tulpa. These creatures, for they fall under no specific category, have their roots in ancient Buddhist beliefs. One of the earliest accounts is of a group of priests who successfully created a Tulpa in the form of a golem. According to some records, the creature destroyed most of the surrounding village before it was stopped. Given this unfortunate beginning, most people stopped trying to create Tulpas in the next 50 or so years.

So what, exactly, is a Tulpa? In the simplest terms, it is an imaginary friend. If a child, possessed of certain psychokinetic abilities, creates an imaginary friend and said friend begins to move objects in the child’s room, then that child has created a Tulpa. Of course, for adults, it isn’t quite so simple. What people put into a Tulpa is what they get out of it, so while a child’s Tulpa is generally harmless and playful, a Tulpa created by one or more adults or adolescents can take on sinister characteristics.

An excellent example is the killer clown scare of 2016, when all across the United States of America, people became convinced that clowns were trying to kidnap and kill their children, or, in some extreme cases, kill the entire family in their homes. Even though the scare lasted a relatively brief space of time and was proven to be a hoax, ever since there have been reports of a red-haired clown skulking near playgrounds and at the edges of woods. This creature is the worst kind of Tulpa, as it subsists off fear and pain, and as long as people keep seeing it and reports keep coming in, it will never die.

Other professionals in the business will insist that in order to create a Tulpa, one must meditate on a symbol specifically designed to create one. The truth of the matter is this: a symbol is needed, but it need not be an ancient Buddhist symbol in the middle of a Mandala in order to work. There must simply be a symbol. In the case of the Killer Clown, the symbol was the iconic Pennywise, who everyone knows and is terrified of. This, again, is the perfect example of what exactly not to do with a Tulpa. The other restriction is that one cannot use their own face as the symbol, as the resulting creation will be their exact equal and opposite, and a doppelganger may be formed.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that a Tulpa can be created by not only a singular person but many at once. Indeed, if a group of people larger than 1000 or so believes that something exists completely for longer than 5 minutes, and those people all have a common image in their mind, they will create a Tulpa without fail. Unfortunately, it is very hard to convince most adults to play make-believe for so long, and children rarely have the attention span. It is only in intense fear that this kind of Tulpa is created and only fear can sustain it unless it is changed by an equally large force of belief.

* * *

Herobrine opened his eyes. Immediately he knew two things. First, it had been at least three weeks since he was last awake, but not much longer than that. Second, and more importantly, he was back in his cell.

He jumped out of the bed and raced around the room. He did two circuits, one looking at the ceiling, one looking at the walls, and then admitted defeat. The bedrock cage was still as solid as ever. There was no way he was getting through the stone anytime soon.

He walked again, more slowly, this time making sure he had food and water and all the facilities in the cell were in order. They were. His desk in the corner was intact if a little dusty. The bookshelves were still full of works of fiction from long before and empty notebooks for writing in. 

There were still chests full of food by the furnace and crafting table, the makeshift counter was still intact. Everything was in order.

Except usually when he woke up there was someone here to tell him what they needed.

“What will it be this time?” He said aloud, “need me to save some idiot? That’s what you had me do before.”

The system spoke to him, in the way that Herobrine knew no one else could hear, “Your task is the same as before. You are to accompany 4979.”

“I can’t do that if I’m stuck in here, now can I?”

“Be patient,” said the other voice, the quiet one.

Herobrine seized the chair from the desk and threw it across the room. It broke, the legs skittering in four different directions. “I’m done being patient!” He yelled.

He didn’t usually get this angry this fast, the person behind the voice knew that. Herobrine did not like being cooped up.

He stalked across the room and gathered up the pieces of the chair. He would repair it later by hand, slowly. He had a suspicion that he was going to be stuck here for a very long time and he would need something to keep him busy.

And he really should be pushing Player in the right direction.

Herobrine went to the food chest and removed a rabbit, which he placed on the counter, followed it with carrots and potatoes. As a general rule, He did not like to cook, and he would take bread over most anything else if given a choice, but he figured if he was going to be trapped that he should at least eat well. It was going to take some experimenting to get things right.

He was eating a bowl of stew, which, he had discovered, was the default outcome to anything involving rabbit and vegetables, when the figure flickered into existence in the room.

Herobrine waved at it with his spoon, “Go away.”

She stepped forward into the light, tall and slim, half-dark. “Like coffee with a little too much cream in it,” the color had once been described to him. He had thought it was a little over the line, considering he tanned almost the same color if he stayed in the sun all day, but after actually seeing coffee and tasting it, decided it was a drink he was okay with being compared to. It was delicious. He sighed and put down the bowl of stew.

She was blinking and looking around in a befuddled kind of way.

“It’s very...lifelike,” she said to no one in particular.

“They can’t hear you,” Herobrine said, “unless they’re watching, in which case they can’t talk back anyway.”

She turned to him. Her eyes were dark and hard, intelligent.

She chose not to respond, which was unfortunate because Herobrine really felt like getting into a good fight. Maybe not a hitting fight, but a yelling fight. That would be fun.

She was getting control of herself. She walked around the room, turning her back to him deliberately as she touched the walls. “It’s bedrock,” she said to herself, “unbreakable.”

Herobrine said nothing.

She looked at the furnace and crafting table, the desk and bookshelves, and the bed. There was no table, no chairs except the broken one. Herobrine was sitting on top of the crafting table, one leg crossed under the other. Finally, she simply turned to face him.

“I’m Dr. Janus Dane,” she said.

Herobrine smirked; she was just like her mother.

“And you are?”

“I’m Herobrine,” He said.

She waited for a second like she was expecting him to elaborate, “That’s it? Herobrine?”

He nodded.

“No, ‘I used to be called,’ or ‘I don’t remember my real name?’”

He shook his head.

She seemed to be mentally taking notes for a moment.

Herobrine stood and retrieved his sword from its item frame. He took a cloth from the chest beside it and returned to his seat. He started polishing the blade.

Janus looked very nervous, “It’s odd that you remember nothing else.”

Herobrine glanced at her, “Herobrine is all I’ve ever been. Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, of course, but--”

He pointed the sword at her, “You don’t get it yet. All you’ve seen are old interview videos. That’s no substitute for the real thing.”

She bristled, “That’s why I’m here!”

He shrugged and went back to the sword.

Janus breathed deep, composed herself. “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” she said.

“I might not answer.”

“That’s fine.”

Herobrine looked up at her, “I want ground rules.”

“Whatever works.”

He sat up, held the sword across his legs, the tip extending out over the knee of the leg folded beneath him, the grip resting on the thigh of the one hanging over the edge of the furnace. “First, if I don’t answer a question, you don’t get to push me. No coercing, no blackmail, no torture. Compile a list if you want, I don’t care if you do that.”

She nodded, “May I re-ask the questions at a later date?”

Herobrine considered this, “Yes.”

“Very well. What else?”

“You need to let me have entertainment down here if you’re going to keep me awake. Nothing too taxing, but I’ll need sharp things, knives and swords and other things, to cook and work on projects.” He stopped, reading the confusion on her face, “What I mean is: don’t try to take away everything dangerous. It doesn’t work in a game like this.”

She nodded, “the first time you try to hurt me, that deal is off.”

“I couldn’t hurt you if I tried,” Herobrine smirked, “even if I killed you, you would just wake up in your normal body.”

“You killed someone a few weeks ago,” she pointed out, “he died just fine.”

He looked down and away to hide the warm glow he felt at the memory. It was the first person he had actually killed. He had killed many avatars, a million players, but Gaimon had been the first real human he had killed. It had been a rush that, before then, he had only ever heard described.

“Why did you do it?” Janus asked.

The light from Herobrine’s eyes illuminated her face as he turned back to her, “He deserved it.”

“What gives you the right to judge that?”

He shrugged, “I was there. You should have heard what he was saying.”

She didn’t respond to that. She obviously didn’t think he was correct, but something in her wondered what the boy had been saying. What would provoke a killing blow?

“Okay, second question, how did you do it?”

Herobrine thought about that for a long time, weighing his options. He was acutely aware of how many people were in the game, 4978 exactly. It was not nearly enough, compared to how the game had been at its peak: millions and millions of players in infinite combinations across thousands of servers. They spoke every language, sometimes made up their own, built cities and towns and castles across infinite worlds. It was not fair to burden these 5,000 people with what millions had neglected to deal with.

“I’m not going to do it again,” Herobrine decided, “so don’t worry about it.”

Janus’s brow creased, “Why not?”

“Because 5,000 people are going to have a hard time doing what they need to do anyway, and killing them is only going to make it less fun for everyone.”

“That logic seems to be the exact opposite of what people like you usually think.”

Herobrine smirked. She didn’t know. “That logic is exactly what people like me believe. I can only fulfill my purpose as long as players are present.”

She dropped that line of questioning with a little sigh of relief. Doubtless, she had not been thinking at all about people like Herobrine. More than likely it was a different breed of monster she had been thinking of. The human kind, the ones that went along hurting children and burying bodies in their backyard.

In Herobrine’s opinion, he was far less terrible than these monsters. 

“Okay.” Janus took a breath, “Here’s one you should be able to answer properly: what are you?”

Herobrine stopped rubbing at the edge of the sword. He looked down at his hand, turned it over so he could examine the calluses on the palm. Finally, he said, “I don’t know”

“Honestly?”

He shrugged, “I wasn’t for a long time, and then suddenly I was. I have no other explanation.”

“Fully grown? You didn’t grow up?”

“No.”

“That goes against everything in the records, you know.”

Herobrine shrugged, “I’ve never seen the records. Why should I care what they say about me?”

She had no response to that.

Herobrine looked at the clock on the wall before she could get her bearings again. It really wasn’t helpful, as it had no numbers, only sun and a moon to indicate dawn and dusk. Even so, he knew how long she had been there.

“You’re almost out of time,” he informed her, “much longer than half an hour and your brain will start to approach this world as if it were the real one. Then you’d be stuck here as well. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

She looked alarmed, and Herobrine hid his delight. Of course, her mind would be just fine no matter how long she stayed in the game, but if he could spook her into spending less time here, that would work just fine.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said, her hand moving in the air, evidently logging off.

“There’s no hurry,” Herobrine waited until she was gone. When she was, he stood up and put the sword back into its item frame. The desk was on the far side of the room from the bed, but he had just broken the chair, so he took a blank book and quill from the shelf and sat on the bed with his back against the wall.

If his purpose was to assist Player, there were some things he should write down.


	22. There's an Answer

“In the three months you’ve been awake, you’ve dismantled and reassembled that chair seventy times at least.”

“Not just that.”

“Yes, every time you put it together, it gets a little more intricate, and every time you break it apart it’s a little more damaged.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“It is how I control my impulses, a technique that was explained to me a while ago by a friend.”

“What impulses are these? And what friend?”

“The impulse is to destroy and destroy completely. I am a being of chaos, Janus, not order.”

“Then why rebuild the chair?”

“Because the other impulse is to protect what is mine. I feel the need to reassemble that chair because I made it with my own hands. If I improve on it each time I do it’s all the better.”

“What will you do when you can’t fix it?”

“I’ll ask you for a new block of wood and start over.”

* * *

When he was asked, later, which part he most enjoyed about the ordeal, Player surprised people with his answer. He would gloss over all the gritty details, as he had been asked to, and left Hero out of the equation entirely. He would reply that before there were even villages in the open world, he had spent about three months on his own, and that was by far the most at peace had ever felt.

It was true enough of the first month or so, but once he had furnished himself with basic comforts he soon found himself growing bored with the everyday repetitive tasks he was faced with. The garden was planted, he had plenty of food, he had no need for more resources and the cave systems in the area were tapped out. 

He tried using clay again to make pottery, and this time he succeeded. The satisfaction from this small success kept him happy for a day or two, and then the discontent returned. 

He found himself idle for longer and longer and thinking more and more. The more he thought, the more distracted he became, and the more philosophical the musing was. By the end of the three months, he had cast aside the question of the true nature of reality, metaphysics, if that’s what it was called, as irrelevant. Instead, he was trying to discern what the purpose of the game was. 

It was all very well for someone living in the real world to claim there was no true meaning to life, he had reasoned, but there must be a reason that everyone in this world calls it “The Game.” Games have end goals. Before the reset it had been obvious, now it wasn’t quite so clear-cut. He had been trying to figure out what exactly they were supposed to be doing for about a month before the messenger came.

The man knocked on his door just after dark, the worst time for Player as he could not work outside but wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet. It was during those quiet minutes, just before the monsters came calling, that he found himself thinking not only of the goal of the game but of Hero’s-- Herobrine’s-- part in the story.

He thanked Notch silently for the interruption to his own troubling thoughts as he stood up. There was a dark shape in the window in the door. It looked human enough, and zombies did not knock. He opened it.

On the other side was a man with short dark hair and dark eyes wearing a traveling cloak and boots. He looked a little worse for wear.

“I’ve come from the village,” he said, not even bothering to step into the house, “Jericho sent me. He said to give you this,” he handed over a rolled piece of paper.”

Player took it and examined it. It was well-made paper, smoother and thinner than what he had ventured to make on his own to keep notes. It was tied with a short piece of string.

“Thanks,” Player said to the messenger.

“No problem,” the man bowed and turned away, heading back into the darkening night.

“Do you want to rest here?” Player called after him.

The man turned back around, “I need to be at the neighboring village before the end of the week. I have to hurry.”

Player didn’t bother to ask about the mobs. They were pushovers, really, and the man looked experienced. “Good luck,” he said, “Notchspeed.”

The messenger vanished.

Player ducked back into the house and went to the table. It was lit up by the ambient light of the torches and furnace, a warm, soft glow, all oranges, and yellows. He sat down in his chair and unrolled the paper. Inside there was only a short note.

“Player, we recently finished building the infrastructure of our village. Now that we’ve established ourselves, we’d like to accept your offer of assistance. We have a house set aside for you if you want it, and several other villages we’ve made contact with have expressed interest in making use of your expertise. Please, come at your earliest convenience. Walk West for a day to reach us. It should not take you too long or be very dangerous.

-Jericho”

Player put the note down carefully. He got up and filled a ceramic cup with water from the bucket on the counter before returning to the table. A little of the water sloshed out of the cup and onto the table as he sat. He realized his hands were shaking and he set the cup down on the wooden surface.

For a long time, he looked at the paper, surprising himself again with the directions his thoughts took.

“I don’t want to be around them,” he said aloud, “I like it better out here, alone. It’s much more peaceful. I don’t have to keep up appearances for anyone. I’m not even pretending to myself anymore.”

It was true. If he went to a village he would be putting himself back into that box. He would be lying again, more than ever now that he didn’t really have to worry about his performance in games. Eventually, he knew, there would be a moment when he faced someone who was intent upon making him tell the truth in one way or another.

“And what truth is that?” he continued his monologue. There was no answer or not one that he knew how to phrase yet. The only things that popped into his head were Ivy and Clarence, and all the emotions attached to them. “So what?” he asked himself, “they’re probably half a world away.”

Hero popped into his head, wearing that distinctive sadistic grin. Not for the first time in the past three months, the image sent shivers of warmth down into his stomach. He reminded himself that Hero was not Hero; he was Herobrine. It really didn’t change how he felt.

“If I stay here, there’s no guarantee I’ll have to face him,” he told himself, “I could go the rest of my life here without ever seeing any of them again.” His stomach lurched at the thought.

Player grabbed the glass of water and drank deeply. He broke off in a coughing fit halfway through and set the glass back down.

It was useless trying to reason himself out of it. He would go, and then he would go to the next village and the next, not to find Clarence or Ivy, but to find Hero.

He got up and went to the door. There were mobs outside, but they were far away and not many. Player put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. He heard the wolf barking, and then it came bounding out of the shadows, all shaggy gray fur and wagging tail.

Player bent to scratch its ears, “Hey, Sam, you’ll be fine without me, right?”

The tail wagged back and forth, and the wolf licked the palm of his hand. He still hadn’t tamed it, but it didn’t seem to be making any difference in behavior.

“Or maybe you want to come too?” Player asked, stepping aside so that Sam could enter the house. “I’d actually have to put a collar on you then. You’re not much for that.”

Sam started poking at the remains of Player’s dinner on the counter with his nose.

“I already gave you the leftovers.” Player crossed back to the table and sat down. He picked up the note and held it out to the wolf, “You know what this means?”

Sam sniffed it, then gave Player a look that clearly said, “that’s not edible.”

“You still remember how to get your own food, right?” Player asked, “I haven’t been feeding you too much, have I?”

Sam growled in a way that sounded totally feral and perfectly reassuring.

“Good,” Player said, scratched the wolf’s ears again. “You can stay here tonight. I have to pack.”

He spent several dark hours sorting through his chests, selecting what he needed and discarding what he did not.

There had been no diamonds in the cave systems. He was still using an iron pick, so he brought a stack of ingots to keep himself supplied for the time being. The precious metals he brought too, the gold and emeralds, which would trade or sell for high prices, especially if the village had been settled near NPCs. Beyond that, he brought enough food to last a week or so, in case he got lost. He took a sword and an axe. He left the armor that he had made for himself on its stand. He found that all armor did for him was slow him down.

Player went to bed with only two hours left before dawn. He couldn’t fall asleep, and got up an hour later, annoyed with himself for wasting time. He replaced all his clothes and whistled softly for Sam, who came got up from his place by the furnace and trotted over.

“Here boy,” Player offered his last piece of chicken. The wolf sniffed at it, then took it from his hand and gulped it down. Player opened the door and stepped aside, and Sam darted out into the early morning.

With a sigh, Player followed reached down for his bag. It was a rough cloth thing, and he usually used it for mining so it was stained nearly black from coal and rock dust. In it he had placed most of what he had decided to bring. It would do the job.

The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon to the West, and Player faced it. In that direction lay mountains, mostly. He hadn’t explored too far in the time he’d been here. There hadn’t been anything he desperately needed that wasn’t in a 2000 block radius.

He climbed up the first slope of the mountain and turned to look back at the little house. The patch of plowed soil was only just starting to show growth. The anvil he had set up gleamed in last of the starlight. Sam was sitting outside of the door, looking up at him.

Player whistled, but the animal did not come. From this distance and in this light, its eyes looked like they were pure white and glowing slightly. Player shuddered and turned away. He saw Hero--Herobrine-- everywhere he looked.

Player turned away from the little house and surveyed the mountainous landscape. He decided he would take the high road, try to stick to the peaks rather than the valleys, all the way out of the biome.

He walked along the ridge for a good two hours before he was forced to climb to the next one to continue going in the same direction. By that time, his mouth was dry and he was beginning to regret going without sleep. He paused halfway to the peak and drank some of his water. He sloshed the remainder around the bottle and decided he needed to ration it out. No more for a long time, unless he found a river or spring.

The peak of this mountain had no ridge, only a steep descent into a valley far below. Player looked at it and sighed, then sat down on a rock and took out his breakfast, a loaf of bread. He ate, looking West over the remainder of the mountains between him and the settlement. If he descended into the valley from here, he could follow it all the way out into the forest beyond the mountains. Beyond the forest, there was an immense expanse of grassland. It was flat and featureless, except for the occasional tree and, far in the distance, what looked like a little jagged line of steel gray against the slate-gray morning sky.

It was the village, he supposed. It looked tiny from this distance, insignificant when compared to the scale of the world around it. A metaphor for everyone in this world, if he wanted to be poetic about it.

Something about the view made Player want to be poetic. There was something in the way the grasslands were golden and the trees still shadowed and pink, and below him, the valley was pitch black, that called up words he didn’t know he had.

“The darkness won’t last long,” he told himself, looking down at the valley. He added, sarcastically, “Maybe when I have someone else to talk to, I’ll stop having conversations with myself.”

He stood again, repositioned the bag on his shoulder, and descended into the valley, picking his way over stones and loose gravel. He used his hands to steady himself against the steep slope, grasping onto outcrops with fingers made strong from manual labor.

He took hold of one stone with his left hand and put his foot down without looking. Too late, he felt the gravel shift beneath his sole. He scrabbled to find a foothold again with both feet, only to feel the rock he was clutching crack beneath his weight. He looked up again, and saw that the stone he had thought was stable was anything but, and threw himself to the side.

The stone came free less than a second after he moved. It rolled past him, a great behemoth at least twice his weight, and tumbled to the valley floor below with a boom that echoed off the stone.

From the place it had been lodged in the side of the mountain, water bubbled forth, filling the hollow the rock had once occupied.

Player groaned as he was up, becoming aware of five or six new bruises from the leap to safety. He took a moment to pant, then retrieved the water from his pack and drank deeply from the bottle. He refilled it with water from the brand new spring and replaced it in his bag.

“Almost through the hard bit,” he said.

The rest of the descent to the valley floor proved uneventful. Once there, Player hurried onward. This place was still shadowed, and he was wary of mobs that might be hiding among the stones. There weren’t any, or at least there weren’t any that wanted a fight. He left the valley before noon, satisfied with his pace, and entered the forest.

It was more difficult to navigate with the trees in his way, but Player managed it for the most part. He stopped and ate again beneath a birch tree, relishing the loosening of his sore muscles as he sat. It had been a long time since he had hiked like this.

Again, irresistibly, his thoughts turned to the goal of the game. He had been going around and around about the question for far too long, and still he had no idea. There were no special abilities to be gained, no bosses to fight, no one to be rescued. If there was a purpose to any of this, it was well hidden.

“And if there’s no purpose?” he asked himself aloud, and then immediately answered, “then it’s a pretty lousy game.”

He stood with a sigh and continued on, letting the ache in his legs and the bruises along his torso distract him from the questions spinning in his mind.

Herobrine had to have a part in all this. Surely he was not simply a destructive force, negative energy. If Herobrine and Hero were the same person, there was no way he was all bad. Player wrinkled up his nose, okay, maybe he was more bad than most. He did kill Gaimon. He needed to keep reminding himself of that. Herobrine killed Gaimon. That was that.

Herobrine killed Gaimon because Gaimon was going to start saying some derogatory things to Player.

Player shook himself. The thought, aside from feeding his strange delusion that Herobrine was not all bad, made no sense. Even if Herobrine had some empathy, why would he waste it on Player? And, if he was sane, why take the punishment to such extremes? It made no sense. The action of killing Gaimon was the result of pent-up homicidal impulses Herobrine had been suppressing for a long time, nothing more and nothing less. It was the only explanation that made sense.

Player nodded, satisfied with his own explanation, and quickened his pace through the trees.

He had misjudged the distance from the top of the mountain. It was going to be difficult to make it to the village before nightfall. He yawned, then blinked the reflexive tears out of his eyes. He was going straight to sleep when he got to the village.

Finally, after what felt like a day of walking through the forest all on its own, Player broke through the line of trees and came out onto the plain. By that time, the fleeting sun was starting to set again.

Player turned back to look at the mountains and saw, to his surprise, that what he had just passed through was a point where the mountains and forest were particularly thin. In either direction, they curved away from him, their edges growing further and further apart as the forest grew thick and tall and the mountains more jagged.

He was lucky that this was the thinnest part of both barriers. Surely trying to go through any other part, even a few miles in either direction, would take three days minimum.

As it was, he was going to have to hurry to avoid being caught out after dark.

Player turned and walked the last couple thousand blocks to the village.


	23. The Walled City

“Look at that spike.”

“That’s insane. Way above anything he’s ever done before.”

“What caused that?”

“Hell if I know. Fighting, maybe.”

“You and I both know that our little Player hates to fight.”

“I don’t know what else could have caused it. Those ratings are only seen in the ‘Gladiators’ and only the really strong ones.”

“Well, whatever caused it, he’s not settling back to normal levels.”

“ always knew this kid had steel in him.”

“Fire too, judging by how much he’s been moving in the game. Whatever set off that spike, he’s chasing it down.”

* * *

It was nearly full dark before Player came within sight of the village. It appeared, from this angle, to be composed of nothing but a sheer rock face, but as he drew closer it became obvious that the builders had constructed a stone wall all the way around the village. It looked pretty thick. It was probably hollow and full of monsters.

There were a couple of zombies in the distance heading toward him, so Player approached what appeared to be the gate in the wall. It looked complicated. It had obviously been constructed using the basic redstone functions, which meant that the system moved with pistons.

Player pulled up sharply outside of the gate.

“Hello up there?” He called, looking up at the wall.

A head popped over it, looked down at him, “State your business.”

Player spluttered for a moment, “Jericho sent me a note saying to come.”

“You’re the miner?”

“That’s me!” The zombies groaned behind him, sounding very near. “Hurry up and let me in.”

“No can do,” The sentry called down, “not with those monsters there. Strict policy.”

Player glanced behind him, “There’s only three!” He ducked as an arrow whizzed by.

“And the skeleton,” The sentry said, “we’ve lost three people to mobs in the last week. The builders have us shut down after dark.”

“Fine!” Player yelled, “I’ll take them out, then you let me in.”

“Good luck.”

Player turned to face the mobs, snarling. He was tired and sore from walking all day, and now this? Whatever. Whatever he needed to do to get his answers, he would do it.

He pulled the iron sword off his back and took it in his right hand, and then took the pick and put it in his left. “Notch, I’m bad at this,” he growled, “absolutely useless.”

The zombies came first, all three of them in a row. Player knew better than to attempt to drive a sword through them all. Instead, he used the pickaxe first, backhand, twisting up long before they arrived and storing energy. The force of the uncoiling nearly parted the rotten head from the body. Instead, the head crushed inwards with a sharp wet sound, and the zombie went off its feet and onto the ground. Player followed through, still unwinding from the first massive blow, and the sword cut a deep slash across the second monster’s chest. If he had more strength, Player thought, he could probably have cut the mob clean in half.

He stumbled back, giving himself distance, and brought the sword up again. This time, he aimed for the head, and the blade went right through. He yanked it free and stepped back.

The third zombie was right there, uncomfortably close. He could smell it. Player ducked a grab and tried to back up again, but his back his the wall. The zombie groaned like it was anticipating the meal.

Player snarled and kicked the mob in the chest. The back of his leg burned, but he didn’t care. The zombie stumbled back, and he used the sword on its head again, this time a vertical chop, so that for a few moments the zombie hung from the blade, a great dead weight. Then it dropped from the sword and onto the ground with a heavy thud.

“There!” Player yelled up to the sentry. He reached down to the back of his leg and rubbed the strained muscle, “No more zombies, open up!”

“No can do,” The sentry looked like he was enjoying this. “Skeletons are a problem.”

Player turned and looked at the hollow mobs, “They’re 30 blocks away. They won’t come in!”

The man paused. He looked behind him over the wall as someone on the other side yelled at him.

“Okay, okay!” The sentry said, “I’m opening the gate.”

The redstone lit up with a hiss and the gate shuddered open, the pistons pulling the fences that made up the grate to either side.

Player dashed through even before they were all the way open, and the sentry wasted no time in shutting the gate down again. He leaned against a wall and rubbed the back of his sore leg.

Jericho was waiting for him. “Sorry about that,” He said, “he’s a little overzealous.”

Player sneered, mostly out of pain, “You don’t say.”

“What did you do to your leg?”

“Pulled a muscle kicking that zombie,” Player winced, “don’t worry about it. It’s nothing a nap won’t fix.”

Jericho raised the torch he was holding and peered at Player, “You look like hell.”

“I didn’t sleep last night,” Player said, “too excited.”

“You must be exhausted,” Jericho said, “come on, We have an inn.”

Player stumbled to his feet and followed him out into the town. Jericho placed the torch back into the bracket on the wall. There was no need for the flame in the streets; they were all lit up by redstone lamps. The lights illuminated rows of small wooden structures, all neatly lined up and well-tended. A few still had lights in the windows, but most were completely dark. They must be rigged up with redstone lamps of their own. The occupants felt very safe behind those stone walls.

Jericho led him to a large stone building just inside the wall. The inside was lit up with firelight and half-full of people. When the man opened the door, a gust of hot air blew out and warmed Player’s face. The inside of the place smelled like smoke and cooking food. It was full of soft conversation and loud laughter.

“This doesn’t look like you just set it up,” Player pointed out.

“We didn’t,” Prague said, from the bar. She turned, legs crossed, to face them, sweeping her brown hair off one shoulder. “We completely forgot about you.”

“Well that’s honest,” Player said, collapsing onto the stool beside her. He rubbed the back of his leg again.

“I thought you should know why we’d called you,” Prague said, 

“Besides, your gift helped us build all this,” Jericho said.

“But really,” Prague said, “we haven’t thought about you in months.”

“Thanks,” Player groaned.

The bartender pushed a glass of something brown and frothy towards him. Player eyed it, then picked it up and smelled it. “You have beer?”

Jericho shifted from foot to foot, “Well, yes. Some of the farmers knew how to make it, and we let them. It’s good for morale.”

Player put the glass down untouched. He looked back towards Prague, “So why am I here?”

“Somebody in another town asked about you.”

His heart jumped, “Who?”

“Some kid named Clarence,” Prague took Player’s glass and took a sip. She made a face but didn’t stop drinking. “He seemed eager to find you.”

Player sighed. He rubbed the back of his neck, “It would be him.”

Prague raised an eyebrow at him.

Jericho cleared his throat, “Anyway before you go off to meet this friend, we could use your help.”

Player looked at him, “With what?”

“We,” Jericho paused, “need some valuables, to start a currency.”

“You’re going to hold yourself to a gold standard?” Player almost laughed, then he winced again.

The bartender appeared again. “Anything to eat?” she asked.

“Pork,” Player said, “if you have it, and water please.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to look at her retreating back. Sir?

“Well, no,” Jericho said, “not exactly. We were thinking more like--”

“Emeralds,” Prague said, “gold is too easy to get.”

“So are Emeralds,” Player said, “the NPC villages will be farmed dry.”

“There are no NPC villages, at least not anyone has found,” Jericho said.

“Then where will you get enough?”

“We’ll figure something out. There must be something we can use.”

“Lapis,” Player said, “or making your own coins.”

“Emeralds,” Prague insisted.

Player shrugged, “Suit yourself.”

The bartender brought his food out. Player looked at her, then at the rest of the room. There were several people who had come in before him who were not served. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was with the builders.

“So what are you using for money right now?” he asked, looking at the bartender.

“Favors, trades,” Jericho said, “I-owe-yous. That kind of thing.”

“It seems to be working,” Player opened his bag and dug for the valuable minerals on the bottom, “why don’t you stick with that?”

“We don’t know how to quantify favors,” Jericho said.

Player nodded. He turned to the bartender, “How much?”

“For you?” she flashed a shy smile, “on the house.”

“Really?”

“Most of the stone we used for this inn was from you,” she said, “there’s no need to pay us for the meal or the room.”

Player smiled, “Thank you very much.”

She bowed slightly and moved away.

“I see what you mean,” Player addressed the builders again. He twisted to take the plate from the bar and balanced it on his knees so he could face Jericho while they talked. He cut a piece off the pork chop. It was amazing; they even had silverware and after only three months. “I don’t see how I can help though. If you want to start a currency, asking me to give up all my resources doesn’t make sense from my point of view.”

“There are ways we could pay you,” Jericho said, “shelter, safety, goods. We have that house waiting for you. You could pay us for it.”

Player put the piece of meat in his mouth and chewed. It was delicious if a bit chewy. He hadn’t had pork since before the reset. He thought for a minute, swallowed. “Keep that house,” he said, “I’ll be moving on soon. If Clarence is looking for me, I should probably find him.”

“He’s across the mountains,” Prague said, “all the way across.”

Player frowned at her, “I could have stayed at my house and gotten there sooner?”

“No, I mean, look,” She produced, from her inventory, a map almost as tall as she was. She stood up and pushed two empty tables together so she could spread it out completely.

While she worked, Player gulped down the rest of his food, not bothering to savor it anymore. She put the plate back on the bar and stood to look at the map.

It was huge and green but had obviously not been made by walking around the entire distance. This was a map drawn by hand from coordinates collected with compasses and guesswork. On it there was a ring of mountains, the same ring Player had crossed to reach the village he guessed, around the center of the map. There were forests and rivers and lakes drawn in. They had been sending messages about more than him in recent weeks.

“This,” Prague said, “is a map of where all the villages are that we’ve made contact with.”

Player whistled: there were at least 20 dots on the map already. They were arranged in a rough circle that mirrored the ring of mountains, all the way along the outside.

“We are here,” Prague said, pointing to a particularly large dot, “and your friend contacted us from this village here,” she stretched her arms out nearly as far as they would go in order to reach a second much smaller dot without losing her grip on the first one. “Your house,” she said, retracting her arms, “is here,” she tapped a point about two inches away from the dot that marked their village.

“That is a long way away,” Player said, eyeing the distance, “what is that, a month’s travel?”

“About that much,” Prague said, “if you go straight through the middle, which you can’t--”

Player held up his hand, “why not?”

They both went silent. In fact, the whole room went silent. The fear was palpable. Player shivered.

“You don’t know?” Prague said.

Player felt that old nervousness returning. People were looking at him and he didn’t like it. He shook his head mutely.

Jericho stepped in. “There’s something there,” he said, “we don’t know what it is or why it’s there.”

“What does it do?” Player asked.

“The mobs are much stronger,” Jericho said, “We lost our best messenger out there two weeks ago, to a slime of all things.”

Player shuddered. It wasn’t a pleasant way to go.

“And it just feels wrong,” Prague said, “like something is watching you, all the time, imagining all the ways it could destroy you.”

“No one goes through the middle,” Jericho said.

Player nodded, “Okay. How long will it take to go around the outside?”

“A month and a half,” Prague said, “maybe two. Not that long.”

Player nodded to himself. “In that case,” he said, “I’d like to sleep before I think about going.”

“But what about--” Jericho started.

“Let me sleep first,” Player said, “I could barely close my eyes last night.”

Jericho looked angry for a moment, then he cooled his own temper, “Okay,” he said, “we’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Player nodded his thanks. The bartender was already hurrying over, eager to show him his room.


	24. I'll Explain it All

Excerpt from the Research notes of Ana Dane, September 4, 2024

While investigating other matters today, I made an odd discovery, and again it was about linguistics. Our dear Benjamin Pond let something slip out during a routine interview, and just by watching his reaction I could tell he said something wrong. That and the fact that he wiped the interview tape clean right then and there and wouldn’t say a word more for the rest of the interview.

He said, “Of course there’s always the Bindings.”

I am familiar with the slang used by the monsters. “Pair” refers to a set of two with a mentor-apprentice relationship, for instance, and the word “nightmare,” to them seems to refer to particularly vivid Night Terrors that often result in property damage. Twice I have heard a particular being referred to as “Angel,” which I was told meant that he was always ready to help lift a “Burden,” a word which to them seems to mean profound guilt or self-hatred.

Never before have I heard the word “Binding,” though I have heard “bound,” before, as in “they are bound together.” At the time, I assumed the phrase was meant literally, but now I am beginning to suspect that it means something very different.

This will require further investigation, but judging by Ben’s reaction, I will have to be subtle about it.

* * *

Herobrine lost his grip on the shard of wood and sat very still as it tumbled to the bed beneath him. He was kneeling on top of the covers, holding his sword in his right hand, pulled back with the hilt facing towards the wall.

He reached down and picked up the wood and repositioned it against the bedrock wall. He dug it into the seam between two of the blocks and gave it a sharp rap with the hilt of the sword. The wood sank in, forcing the tiny crack to widen.

Herobrine reversed the sword and worked the tip of it into the crack as well. He levered his weight against it and felt the block shift infinitesimally. He was actually getting somewhere with this.

He retrieved the shard of wood and removed his sword from the wall. The sword was flipped around, the shard of wood repositioned a little lower than before, and again Herobrine gave it a sharp blow.

The wood splintered and he hit his thumb with the hilt of the sword.

“Fucking Nether,” He swore, bouncing to his feet. He stuck the thumb into his mouth and sucked on it, then removed it to survey the damage. He had a single large splinter in the pad of his finger. He squeezed at the area with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand and managed to work it loose so he could get a good grip with his teeth. He winced as he pulled out the shard of wood, spat it out of his mouth and into the bucket he was using as a trash can. A tiny drop of blood oozed from the cut, and again he sucked on the offending digit. He swept the remains of the wood off the bed with his free hand and into the trash.

Wood was really not the best substance to work through bedrock with, but it was the only thing he could shape into the right type of wedge. A knife would have been too thin, and the sword was too thick to get in, so wood scraps from the chair would have to do.

He had been dismantling it, taking the right size piece off, disguising the mark with carvings, and reassembling the increasingly flimsy and unstable furniture for several months now. It was on its last legs. They were almost too thin and delicate to support Herobrine’s weight. Most it was getting too delicate to actually use.

He was going to actually break it soon and ask for more wood. The two blocks of bedrock on the wall he had been loosening were almost out now. He just needed to figure out a way to completely remove them without arousing suspicion. Doubtless, there were more obstacles, but provided it wasn’t more bedrock or something of similar hardness, he should have no problem.

Herobrine stepped to the wall again and rubbed his hand over it. He could feel the blocks shifting under his palm. It was maybe half a centimeter of movement, but it should be enough.

His ears popped as Janus Dane connected to the game. He crossed the room and began examining the flimsy chair. She spawned in behind him.

“Welcome back,” he said, even before she had taken a breath. “Yesterday was visiting day, wasn’t it?”

“It was. Let’s continue. I have new questions.”

She was taking the half-hour thing seriously. That was nice. He was guaranteed 23 hours a day of solitude to work on his projects.

He left out the book, didn’t he?

Herobrine looked up at the desk. It was right there, in the middle of the desk, open to a page detailing how to locate a nether fortress. He averted his eyes from the evidence and focused totally on Janus. “Well?”

“I found something in my mother’s notes,” she said, “I thought you might know something.”

Herobrine tilted his head at her.

“What’s a binding?”

Herobrine swallowed. He sat down in the chair. It cracked under his weight and dumped him onto his back. He cursed again, but quietly.

Janus looked a little taken aback by the display of clumsiness. Up until that moment, Herobrine had always been perfectly poised. He dragged himself to his feet brushed his legs down.

She was still looking at him. He could feel her gaze burning into the back of his neck.

“A binding,” Herobrine said, “is something I have never experienced.”

She frowned, “So you know what it is?”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “Probably, digital things can’t bind. There’s a lot of stuff like that: only available to those with flesh and blood.”

“Yes, but what is it exactly?”

Herobrine looked at her, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” She sighed.

_ I lie to you a lot, that’s all.  _ “I know I’m the weakest of all of us, so they don’t tell me much.”

Janus moved to sit on the bed, but Herobrine’s eyes flashed bright and she stood straight again fast. Whether or not he said he was the weakest, he had killed someone. “Is that really it?” She asked, “You don’t know?”

He smirked, “If I were you, I’d go back and look at the rest of those notes. Your mother had a lot more resources than you do.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“She had contact with others beside me. Why you’re wasting your time here is beyond me.”

Janus frowned, “You’re very down on yourself.”

“I’m being realistic. I heard people talking about your mother. She was well-liked.”

“Really?”

He shrugged, “She made the effort to understand us. She couldn’t, but she tried. It was appreciated.”

She didn’t seem to have a response to that.

Herobrine looked down at the remains of the chair. It was in large enough pieces for him to make use of it. “I guess I should ask for that new block of wood.”

She produced it without a fuss and without trying to bargain, which only proved to him that she was being far too lenient. She had no chance of holding him, really. 

“Thank you,” he immediately opened up his inventory and set about splitting it into planks. She watched him for a few seconds. Evidently she was out of things to ask about.

“Was there anything else?” He asked Janus.

“No.”

“Then please,” he gestured with an open hand like there was a door on the other side of the room.

Again the hesitation, and then she left. His ears popped again as she disconnected from the game.

Herobrine waited for two minutes, and then he turned and slammed the book on the desk closed. Too close, way too close. He was getting sloppy. He hid it in its usual place in the hollow behind the bookshelf and turned back to the remains of the chair. Everything today was going wrong. At least he had managed to hold her off on the bindings. He hadn’t really been lying: he didn’t know exactly what a binding was.

He picked up the seat of the chair and what remained of the legs and set them where the book had been. He looked at them for a moment. He could use these to get the bedrock off the wall. All he needed was something to slip behind the block.  
Herobrine turned and looked at the bed. There was an idea forming.

He took his sword from where he’d left it and used it to cut a thin strip of cloth off the edge of the blanket. Perfect.

There was no time to waste. As soon as he was out of here he could get to work. 

Herobrine worked at it for somewhere upwards of an hour before he got the fabric behind the loose block of bedrock. The strip of fabric was a little too short for him to grip it properly, so he used the broken legs of the chair as levers and hauled on it.

The block popped out of the wall and Herobrine caught it with a grunt. He set it on the edge of the bed.

The hole gaped in the wall, dark and foreboding. Herobrine conjured a redstone torch and leaned into the gap. It was only a single block deep, as he had expected. He was definitely underground.

With a sinking feeling in his chest, Herobrine reached out to touch the obsidian on the other side of the hole. It was smooth and cold and almost has hard as bedrock. Unlike bedrock, its edges were firmly attached to all the blocks around it so he couldn’t crack it open.

Wood wouldn’t break it, a knife would just snap in half, he had no stone or any iron to make a pick. His sword might do the trick, but it would be a long process, longer than a day spent chipping away non-stop, and if Dr. Dane knew he had removed part of the bedrock he would be put back to sleep forever.

There was no way out as things currently were. He would have to come up with a new strategy.

In the meantime, he would have to hope that some player with a diamond pick got curious enough to investigate the obsidian box.

Herobrine picked up the bedrock from the bed and slid it back into place. He left the strip of fabric behind it, hidden but ready to be used at any moment. He would figure out a way to get some iron out of Janus eventually. He wanted to be ready.


	25. Little Things Echo

“You’re asking me for iron?”

“Yes, I am.”

“On what grounds?”

“I broke my knife and I can’t make myself a new chair without one.”

“Let me see the knife. Maybe I can fix it.”

“It’s in the trash.”

“What did you do to it?”

“Threw it at the wall.”

“Okay. One new iron ingot coming up.”

“I need three.”

“For one little knife?”

“It’s an odd recipe.”

“You’re getting one. I’ve seen the players make more out of less.”

“I’m not like them.”

“You’re enough like them to make do with one ingot. I’m not going to give you enough iron to make a pickaxe.”

“Fine. I’ll figure something out.”

“Good. Here you go.”

* * *

Player spent one more day in the walled village, collecting supplies. The builders had made a lot of progress in three months. There were stores set up selling everything from fresh baked goods to mining equipment. Not that there were very many people buying mining equipment, and since he had a find iron pick and plenty of torches he gave that store a pass.

“The miner?” said the woman at the front of a store selling basic supplies, “I’ll give you a discount.”

“You’re the one who gave them the stone?” the boy in the bakery asked, “Here, some cookies. On the house, don’t worry about it.”

“The sentry was yelling at you last night?” the man polishing the display armor in his shop window laughed, “That’ll be Tom. He’s a little over-enthusiastic. Don’t mind him. Want some armor, you say? Leather? I can do that.”

“Just wrap it up and give it to me,” Player said, “I’m not going to wear it right now.”

The man complied, “Going for a long trip?”

“Seems like it.”

“Get yourself a horse. It will carry you, if not some of the burden.”

“I’d prefer to walk.” Player had once been thrown by a horse he had managed to steal from a gladiator during survival games. It had not been a pleasant experience.

“Go see Joel on the edge of town, trust me,” the man winked at him, “you two will get along.”

“What do you mean by that?” Player asked, but the man only chuckled and gestured him out of the shop.

He did end up going to the edge of the town, but only by accident. He was following a map given to him by Jericho that was supposedly leading him to a second gate out of town in the direction he wanted to be going. The area he was passing through was lined on either side by barns storing food and pens of chickens and pigs eating from troughs.

They probably grew the food on the outside of the wall, Player thought to himself. He hefted his heavy bag higher up on his shoulder--the cookies the baker had given him seemed heavier than they should be. It would make sense. They didn’t have enough resources to build a 20-block high wall around the fields.

Right at the edge of the town, as he traced the path of the wall, there was a large fenced area. Player paused to look at it, curious as to its contents. He couldn’t see anything alive apart from a few trees, but there were troughs for water at the far end and a couple feeding stations. 

Player shrugged and kept on walking. It was going to take him long enough to get to where Clarence was anyway. He was going to find Clarence, and from there make a start on finding Hero--Herobrine. He kept repeating that to himself, “I am going to find Herobrine,” and ask him two very important things. That was the plan.

He was just about to pass the edge of the fence when there was a yell, followed by an animal scream. An animal exploded into the enclosure, all bunching muscles and massive legs. It circled the enclosure twice, slowing to a trot from the gallop.

It was a shaggy creature, smaller than a horse, larger than a donkey. Brown in color, with a mane and tail darker than its body.

“Woah,” Player said.

The animal slowed further, to a walk. It whinnied, tossing its head in a combative manner. It eyed him for a moment, then carried on by. 

Player walked back over to the fence and leaned on it, watching the mule trot around and around. He whistled, and its long ears pricked up. It brayed at him. It wasn’t a very pretty sound.

Player dug into his inventory and produced one of the carrots he’d just bought. He offered it to the animal. The mule took a few steps towards him and stopped, flicking its tail back and forth. It huffed out a breath and stamped its hooves.

“You don’t want to come closer?” Player asked. The animal’s ears went back flat against its head. “Okay.” He tossed the carrot into the pen, not directly at the mule, but a little to the side. 

The animal shied away, but a moment later it was back and munching appreciatively on the carrot.

“There, you see?” Player took another from his bunch and held it out, “Not bad at all.”

This time it shambled up to him, turning its head left and right to look at him out of big brown eyes. It took the carrot out of his hand, soft lips brushing over his fingers.

Player reached out to stroke its neck, and the mule jerked away. It swept off again, trotting around the enclosure before returning to stare at him some more.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Player told it.

The mule shook its mane as if in agreement that it could kick him into dust if he so much as tried.

“One more go,” Player told himself, removing a third carrot from the bundle. He held it out.

Again the mule approached, and again it took the food from his hand.

“There you go,” Player said to it. He laid a palm between the animal’s eyes, and though it flinched it didn’t pull away. “Good girl.”

The mule flicked its ears and blinked at him. It ducked its head away from him and stamped, but didn’t run.

Player stroked its neck for a minute, just thinking. The mule was taller than he was, a huge powerful creature that could probably kill him with one powerful kick. He was watching the muscles in its shoulder quiver.

“You must be one of Joel’s,” he said to the mule, conversationally, “I was told he’s the one with the horses.”

She blew a gust of warm air at him, and Player smiled. He gave her neck one last pat.

“Okay. I’ll see you later,” he told her, and turned away, replacing the carrots in his inventory.

The mule brayed at him from the enclosure, sounding very upset with his decision.

“Sorry,” Player called back, “I have places to be.”

After he had gone through the gate on the edge of the village, another man came out of the shadows near the stables and crossed to the mule. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his upper body showed evidence of the fall he had just taken off the mule’s back. He offered her a carrot of his own, and, to his surprise, she took it out of his hand.

“That’s something you don’t see every day,” Joel said, patting the mule’s flank. She huffed at him. “What?” Her ears went back. “Oh, so you let him talk to you but not me?” The mule trotted off, flicking her tail distastefully at him.

Joel went and found a lead rope for her. He managed to tempt her back in with another carrot and slipped the halter over her head.

“How much do you think he’d pay for you?” He asked the mule.

She only shook her head, trying in vain to dislodge the leather.

“Well, I can’t keep you around forever.” Joel looked down at himself, “let me grab a shirt.”

Player was about half a mile out of the village when he heard someone yelling at him.

“Hey, you, hold on!”

He turned and saw a man leading the mule towards him, tugging gently on the lead every few steps to get her to move. The man looked like he had hurriedly washed his face before he followed Player. There were faint outlines of dirt stains on his cheeks and forehead, and there were streaks of dirt on his arms. This, Player decided, was Joel.

He stopped and let the man catch up to him.

Joel paused a few feet away and brushed a hand through his hair. He seemed to catch his breath. The mule stamped and shifted side-to-side. Player waited for him to speak, watching the animal more than the man.

Joel gained his composure and looked Player over, surprise flickering in his eyes. His shoulders slumped slightly, “You don’t want a horse, do you?” he said like he already knew the answer.

Player shook his head.

Joel turned and patted the mule on the neck, “Thought so. Too bad, would have been nice to get this hinny off my back.” He turned away and walked back towards the village, perhaps a little faster than he had approached. The mule resisted for a moment and then allowed itself to be tugged after the man.

Player shook his head and turned away. “Hinny?” He said to himself. Female mule, perhaps? That was the only explanation he could think of. He was glad that Joel hadn’t pressed the issue. He guessed he liked the animal well enough, but he didn’t have the know-how or the patience to care for it.

Player stayed put and opened up the copy of the map Prague had given him. He had circled the proper settlement on it in red dye and traced what had seemed to him like the best path to reach it. The path went around the outside of the ring of mountains because he had figured there might be something to the claims of a malicious force there. There were no other villages directly in the path, which he thought was pertinent. If he wandered into other settlements he risked getting sidetracked by rumors of interesting mines or something similar, or even people like Joel for that matter. It was going to take long enough to get to where Clarence was without taking any detours.

Player put the map away again and kept walking down the path. After another half mile or so he turned off of it and put the mountains on his right side. That was how he was going to navigate, he decided, by tracing the ring of mountains. Hopefully, along the way he would find some lead to what exactly was inside the ring.

Far behind him, Joel was having trouble pulling the mule back towards the village. She really wanted to follow the strange man, and he did not want her following him.

“Come on, girl,” he scolded her, “you won’t be happy with a miner, you know. He’ll drag you into all kinds of small cramped spaces, and we both know how much you hate those.”

She brayed and pulled hard against him.

“He was paired with a guy who killed someone,” Joel continued, “I was there, I saw it. Someone like that may not treat you nice.”

She took no notice of his words.

Finally, as a last resort, Joel produced a carrot from his inventory and tempted her with it. She followed that happily enough.

Joel took her back to the pen, but he didn’t attempt to bring her back into the stables. That was a losing battle.

He made a very quiet complaint later on the subject of the miner to an old gladiator friend named Tom who was working as a sentry for the village. It wasn’t so much a complaint as a warning: this guy was paired with a murderer. Worse, a murderer who bore a distinct resemblance to the legendary Herobrine.

In the next week, the matter worked its way up the chain to Jericho and the other builders, who, though skeptical, agreed to look into the matter if and when Player ever returned to their little village.


	26. Simple Things Last

“The other boy is still sick.”

“Is he really sick, or is it just in the game?”

“It’s the game as far as we can tell.”

“Probably spider bites or something similar. Mobs can be nasty.”

“Is there nothing we can do for him?”

“From your end of things? No.”

“What about the other players. Can they help him?”

“Oh yes. They’ll do their part, don’t worry about it.”

“What does he need?”

“Heat, hot food, someone to talk to. Not much. Players are resilient things.”

“He’s been very lonely.”

“Haven’t we all?”

* * *

It took Player a little more than two long, dull months to reach the village where he had been told Clarence would be. It would have been faster if he had taken the mule, of course, and by the time he reached the place, he was seriously regretting not taking the animal.

The village looked how Player was expecting it to. It was mostly fields growing wheat and potatoes. The irrigation system was large and complicated, sometimes passing water overhead rather than underfoot and up terraces where the fields had been built into hills. It appeared that they had somehow rigged up a system of pipes. Player guessed that there was a skilled metalworker among all of the farmers. Beyond the fields, he could see a small group of buildings. Some of them appeared to be barns, but there were definitely houses there.

Player sighed and hiked his pack higher up on his back. It was lighter than when he had started out, but not by much. He had been tempted by a couple of the caves in the mountains. He started walking towards the center of the fields, zig-zagging along the paths between them because none of them seemed to be exactly rectangular. He dared not cut across the fields, not with the farmers watching.

Player glanced around. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the fields. No one at all. He looked again towards the buildings. It wasn’t a very large number of houses, but surely someone would be watching their crops. He stepped out onto the tilled earth and hurried towards the village, doing his best not to crush the seedlings underfoot.

They were gathered outside one of the buildings, murmuring amongst themselves as if they were very excited, but the tone of their voices seemed to indicate a tragedy had taken place. As he approached, a few noticed him.

They shied away from him. One man ducked into an alley and disappeared. Then one woman seemed to process his entire appearance and her face cleared.

“Who are you?” She asked.

“My name’s Player,” Player said, “I was told Clarence was looking for me.”

There were several seconds of silence, and then someone cleared their throat. “You know Clarence?” the woman asked.

Player nodded, trying not to crumble under the force of their stares.

“We should let him go in…” someone said from the back of the crowd.

They squeezed to the other side of the narrow street to let him go up the steps to the house. He shuffled past awkwardly and climbed the steps. There was light inside the house, the dim glow of torchlight, sickly and yellow. He knew then what he would find inside, and his stomach clenched.

He pushed open the door without knocking. It was colder inside than it had been outside, and he noticed the drop in temperature. The house was a one-room affair, as Player’s house was. It was a well-furnished space, very comfortable. There were a sofa and two chairs, all made of soft brown wool, an oak table, and what looked like a refrigerator. There were item frames on the walls for tools and carpets on parts of the wooden floor. Everything had a faint coat of dust on it like it hadn’t been lived in for a few weeks. On the far side of the room, tucked into a corner, was a bed.

Clarence was sitting in the bed, leaning back against several pillows. His arm was in a sling and one of his eyes was obscured by bandages. There were two people bent over him, both men, checking his pulse and reflexes. Player did not recognize either of them, and he understood that he was the first friend from before the reset Clarence had seen. Surely if any others had been in this place, they would be with him now.

Clarence glanced up at the sound of the door closing and what little of his face was visible lit up. “Player?”

For the first time in several months, Player stopped thinking about Herobrine. His stomach dropped as he registered the ugly bruises around Clarence’s mouth and on his neck. He felt a deep sense of responsibility like this was his fault somehow.

Clarence hesitated, “That is you, right, Player?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Player dropped his bag and pickaxe on the floor. He hurried across the small room and, pushing the doctors out of the way, sat on the edge of Clarence’s bed.

Clarence did what Player expected him to do. He reached out his good arm and hugged Player so tightly Player had a hard time believing he was injured at all. He hugged Clarence back, also one-handed because he did not want to risk hurting the man’s already injured arm. The embrace was not a warm one. Clarence was cold.

“What happened?” Player asked.

Clarence sat up straight again. His brown cow-eye held a look Player had never seen there before. “It was amazing,” he said, “I wish you could have seen it. There were berry bushes and fruit trees, and I swear I saw at least five species of flower I’ve never seen anywhere else. There are cracks in the stone that go nearly down to the bedrock, and at the bottom, you can see all kinds of things sparkling and--” he broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Don’t overexert yourself,” One of the men, the shorter one, said. The taller one only gave Player a look that suggested if Clarence had any kind of fit he would be the first one at Player’s door with a pitchfork in hand.

Player saw a glass and a pitcher on the bedside table and snatched both. He poured Clarence a glass of what turned out to be milk and passed it to him. He smiled fondly as Clarence gulped it down. It reminded him of the first time he had met the man.

When Clarence was ready to speak again, he took a deep breath and started much more slowly, “It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a gold mine.” He smiled at Player, “you could probably turn it into one.”

“But what happened to you?” Player said. He noticed that Clarence’s hand around the glass was shaking violently and gently removed it. The man’s nails were broken and his fingertips were bruised. They were the hands of someone who had fought desperately for their life.

Clarence looked down. “Mobs,” he said after a long pause, “they’re stronger there. Some of the skeletons have swords, and they ride on spiders. They move fast.”

“You gave them a good fight, huh?” Player asked.

Clarence smiled, “Ya, I did.”

One of the doctors cleared his throat. Player looked at him, his attention finally snapping off of Clarence. The man was a little older than either of them. He looked competent enough. “Would you come with us for a minute?” He asked Player.

Player looked back to Clarence, who nodded a little, wincing. “I’ll survive a couple of minutes alone.”

He got up and followed the two men out of the house, picking up his pack and pick on the way out. There was still a crowd outside talking amongst themselves but now obviously discussing Player. The taller doctor gave them a look and they slowly dispersed, some heading towards the fields and others to the barns and houses. More than one threw a nervous glance towards Player.

The doctors led him across the street and into another building. This one had a small waiting area and several rooms down a long hallway. It appeared that this village had healthcare. Player felt a surge of gratitude to the two men for taking care of Clarence.

Once they were in one of the private rooms, the two men turned to him. They did not bother with formalities.

“How well do you know Clarence?” The tall one asked.

“Not well,” Player said, “I knew him for a little more than a week before the reset.”

“He seems to know you well,” The short one said, ”you seem to distress him somewhat.”

Player nodded, “there was an incident. It wasn’t his fault, but I was angry at everyone.”

They exchanged a glance and nodded a little.

“So you wouldn’t be willing to watch him for a few days?”

Player frowned, “There isn’t anyone here doing that?”

The tall one shook his head, “No. Farmers aren’t really like that. It’s every man for himself with them. That and they don’t seem to know him very well. He’s been very quiet since the reset.”

“Being separated from his friends has probably been hard,” Player said, “I’m the first one he’s seen, aren’t I?”

The short one nodded, “To our knowledge.”

Player looked away, “None of those people are helping take care of him?”

“No.”

Player felt that guilt again, as odd as it was. He felt responsible for Clarence’s misfortunes somehow. Anyway, he’d always thought of Clarence as being fragile. That wasn’t true, judging by how the man had fought for his life, but he wanted to protect him.

“I can do it,” Player found himself saying, “It’s only fair.”

Smiles of relief spread across their faces.

“What injuries does he have?”

“A dislocated shoulder, sprained ankle, bruises on his face and neck from being thrown around. His right cheek and forehead were lacerated, probably by some kind of plant with thorns. He has a few spider bites on his hands and lower arms, they’re making him weak and sick.”

“No one was with him?”

“There were five others on the expedition,” the short one said, “They brought him back. He was lucky to survive the trip.”

Player nodded, “What am I going to have to do?”

“Oh, not much. We’ll take care of the medicine. We want you to get him to eat, and make sure he’s comfortable. He hasn’t been able to move much since they brought him back. The bites are bothering him”

Player nodded. Easy enough. He’d taken care of himself when he had spider bites. He knew how to handle that. As for food, he could cook a little, and there were plenty of fresh vegetables and meat around.

“I’ll go back over there now,” Player said, “and tell him what’s going on.”

They seemed about to protest for a moment, but the shorter one nodded, “Of course,” and the taller one seemed to nod in agreement.

Player turned away and started to leave.

“Be gentle with him,” the man told his back, “he’s still a little traumatized.”

“I won’t hurt him,” Player said.

He crossed the street again and went into Clarence’s house. Again, it was noticeably colder than the street outside. The man was still sitting in bed, head tilted forward. He looked very small. He looked up as Player came in and smiled, “Hello again.”

Player dropped his pack on the ground, “Hey.”

“Why are you back?”

Player moved one of the chairs over to the bed and sat down. It threw up a little puff of dust which made Clarence smile. “The doctors asked me to stay with you for a while.”

Surprise flickered across his face, “And you will?”

Player nodded.

“No one else will,” Clarence said. There was a hint of bitterness in his voice. “Not because they care about me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I brought back seeds,” Clarence said, “for strawberries and blueberries. One for a walnut tree. All kinds of things.”

“That’s great!” Player said, “you’ll be the only one with those crops in the world.” His mouth was watering just thinking about strawberries.

Clarence grinned, “It is, isn’t it?” He went quiet, “you remember when Bit got all greedy about your emeralds?”

“I do,” Player was surprised Clarence remembered.

“Well, it’s like that, except it’s everyone in this place against me.”

“I see.”

Clarence didn’t look at him for a long time. He was watching his own hand, spotted with bites from mandibles. “It’s weird,” he said eventually, “I don’t really miss them.”

“You mean Bit and Ivy?”

“And Spark,” Clarence said, “would you believe that?”

Player stayed quiet.

Clarence looked at him, “You think about Hero all the time, don’t you?”

Player nodded. He couldn’t believe Clarence recalled all of it when he himself had half-forgotten. There was more to this person than he had given him credit for.

“Of course you do,” Clarence said, “hard to forget someone like that.”

“Hero made an impression on all of us,” Player said, “just not the kind we would have expected.”

Clarence laughed gently, “He did fit the bill.”

Player smiled a little, “Asshole gladiator.”

“Amen.”

They fell silent for a moment. Clarence was rubbing at one of the bites with his thumb. “I’m sorry for what happened with your mine,” He said, “I didn’t think that Ivy would go for something like that. Bit I never would have even guessed at.”

“It’s okay,” Player said, “It wasn’t your fault. Besides, it was a while ago now.”

“Seven months at least.”

“That’s long enough to stop being angry for something stupid like that.”

“Notch, I was mad at them. I yelled at them for half an hour after they came back.”

Player shivered, “I don’t want to see you angry.”

“No you don’t,” Clarence laughed, and then he winced, grabbing his shoulder with his free hand.

“You okay?” Player asked.

“No,” Clarence winced. 

“I’m supposed to be taking care of you,” Player got to his feet.

“No, it’s okay.” Clarence reached out and grabbed his arm, “talking is fine. No one has talked to be properly since I got back.”

Player sat again. “How long have you been stuck in bed?”

“Two days.”

“Where did you go anyway?”

“Over the mountains,” Clarence said, “into the center of the circle.”

Player raised his eyebrows, “really?”

Clarence nodded and winced, “It’s weird over there. Fruit as far as the eye can see, all kind of animals and plants. Absolutely beautiful, but the whole time you’re there you feel like you’re being watched. Something is out there, and it’s nothing good.”

Player nodded, “I’ve heard that before.”

Clarence sat back against the pillows, “It was the strangest experience I’ve ever had.” He looked very tired all of a sudden.

“Do you want anything?” Player asked. He reached out a hand and brushed it across Clarence’s forehead. The man was shivering. He felt cold and clammy.

Clarence shook his head, “I throw up whatever I eat.”

“You kept the milk down,” Player said gently.

“Liquids are okay,” 

“Okay,” Player said, “I hear you.” He started to stand up again.

“No,” Clarence said, “stay here.”

“I’m not going far,” Player crossed to the other side of the room and retrieved his bag. He brought it back over and dug through it. His furnace wasn’t in the pack. Player stuffed a hand into his pocket and brought up his inventory. There it was. He pulled it out and set it on the ground beside Clarence’s bed.

The man watched him do it through his one half-open eye, “What are you doing?”

“Warming this place up.” Player piled some coal into the furnace and lit it. It hissed and popped, and then heat flowed out into the room. “There we go. That will help.”

Clarence regarded him through his one large brown eye. He looked a little woozy, but that obviously wasn’t going to stop him from saying his bit. “You’re different,” he said to Player, “you’re friendlier. Happier.”

Player glanced around the house, looking for a cupboard, “do you have a pot?”

Clarence shook his head, “I haven’t been here in a long time.”

“Because you went exploring?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” Player said, “I’m going to go find your blacksmith and a well. You stay here. Try to sleep.”

Clarence grabbed his arm again, “Wait. Did you hear what I said?”

Player looked at him, “What?”

“You’re better,” Clarence said, “you’re talkative and happy, and you smile a lot more. Why?”

Player sat on the edge of the bed again, “I’ve had a lot of time on my own,” he said. “I guess I finally got my head on straight.”

Clarence broke into a huge grin, “That’s good. I was worried about you before.”

Player frowned at him, “Why?”

“Because you were sad,” Clarence said, “and nothing we could do cheered you up. Hero helped a little, but you never laughed at all.”

Player looked down at him in amazement. Had he really thought that Clarence didn’t care about him?

“See? You’re smiling again.”

Player let himself smile at Clarence, “Okay. I’ll be right back. Try to get some sleep.”

“I’ll be fine,” Clarence said. He shifted down so he was lower on the pillows. Player heard what he meant,  _ “I’ll be fine because you’re here now.” _

He left the house again, locking the door behind him with the key he had found on the hook nearby. He was making lists in his head of things he needed. He had enough iron and emeralds to pay for whatever he had to get. The farmers might be shy of him, but they would not turn down resources. He would be damned if Clarence didn’t get the best.


	27. Kindness Begets Kindness

“I have good news”

“What is it, Janus?”

“The boy’s fever broke.”

“You panicked over nothing, I told you.”

“I can’t believe it was all in his head.”

“Believe it. They think this world is real. The kid gets bitten by spiders in this reality, he’s going to have a fever in your reality.”

“I’ll take your word for it. You seem to have the most experience.”

“What helped him, anyway? People can die from those bites. They can’t keep food down.”

“Another player is watching him. As far as we can tell, he’s making the calls.”

“That’s cute.”

“It’s 4979.”

“Player?”

“Have a problem with that?”

“If it means what I think it does, I’m glad he’s back on his feet.”

“What?”

“He’s getting better.”

* * *

Player spent a half hour finding the part of the town that actually had shops in it. There weren’t that many. It appeared that most of the time in this community was spent working, not selling goods.

There were only five shops in the whole town. There was a bakery, a general supply store, an animal goods store, grocers, and a blacksmith. There was also a single restaurant and bar, and Player guessed that it wasn’t just Jericho’s village that had noted the effect of alcohol on morale.

He ignored the restaurant for the moment and went into the blacksmith’s shop. Inside it was still and quiet, but he could smell the faint tang of heated metal in the air, and in one corner the bellows stood huge and silent, like the corpse of a sleeping beast.

Player looked around before calling. The products in the shop were mostly related to farming. There were hoes and buckets and shovels. Player could make all of these things by himself, most players could, but there was something special about getting them from someone whose job was to make them. Also, the blacksmiths made products of higher quality with more durability. 

Of course, they also made luxury items that most players could not make by themselves. Like pots and ladles and sometimes horseshoes. This shop had all three, though very few horseshoes. It also had knives and forks and small delicate plates made of gold. Player regarded this last disapprovingly. What was the point?

“Hello?” He said to the empty shop.

No one responded. He shrugged and went over to where the pots were. There wasn’t a very large selection, but he pretended to be interested in the very slight variations in two or three for a couple of minutes. Then he shrugged and grabbed a large iron item and retrieved a similar ladle from the wall. Neither of these items was marked with a price.

“Hey!” Player tried again, “anyone here?”

Something rattled from the back room. Something else fell over with a bang.

A woman stuck her head out of the door, wiping coal off of her face. “Sorry,” She said, “I couldn’t hear you back there.”

“It’s okay,” Player repositioned the pot and ladle so he could dig into his pack.

She came out of the backroom, dusting her hands off as she came. “What can I do for you?”

“I just need the pot and ladle.”

“Making something special?”

“Just soup.”

She had walked behind the makeshift counter in the front of the store at this point, and leaned forward to examine him more closely.

Player shifted uncomfortably under her stare, but he didn’t retreat.

“You have any coal?” She asked.

“Yes, somewhere,” Player said. He put the pot down on the counter and opened his pack. He dug down past the iron and ore he had neglected to smelt. The coal was wrapped safely in a square of leather, which he produced.

She straightened up, surprise on her face.

“Are you still trading for goods?” Player asked, “or do you have currency.”

“We’re still trading,” she said, “what’s fair?”

“I’d like to keep at least half of it. I have to use something to cook soup.”

“Okay, miner. Fifteen pieces plus some of that ore in your bag.”

Player frowned, “Just the coal. I have to buy other things too.”

“Fine.”

He handed over the coal, trying to actually touch the stuff as little as possible.

“Thank you very much,” the blacksmith chirped.

Player pushed the pot and ladle into his inventory.

“What are you shopping for, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m helping Clarence out,” Player said over his shoulder.

He heard her say, “oh.”

The other shopkeepers were, if anything, even less receptive. They haggled and hemmed and hawed, and gave Player all kinds of trouble getting what he needed. Despite that, in less than an hour he had what he was after.

Clarence was asleep when he got back, looking like it was the first time he’d rested in weeks. The room was warming up fast, thanks to the furnace, but it still felt damp and disused.

Player put down the pot and all of the food on the counter of the little kitchen space and checked the man’s temperature again. Clarence was no longer clammy, and he wasn’t shivering. He still felt cold, which was weird. Player had been bitten by spiders before. Usually, a fever was the result, not whatever this was.

“Well, it won’t be like that much longer,” he told himself. 

Player dumped most of the water he’d gathered into the pot and set it to boil. The rest he took and warmed on top of the furnace by the bed. That furnace was what he used to smelt ore, so he dared not actually cook on it, but it would heat the house and water.

By the time Clarence was waking up, Player had removed most of the dust from the inside of the house out of boredom. Cooking was a lot more interesting when he was doing it over a campfire and using something he had recently scavenged up, he had discovered. Using a furnace and crafting table just didn’t have the same feeling.

“What’s that smell?” Clarence said.

Player stopped cleaning his pickaxe and came over to check on him. “Dinner,” he said, “hopefully.”

Clarence closed his eyes again, “Right. I should have guessed.”

Player sat down on the chair beside the bed, “How’re you feeling?”

“Warmer. That furnace helps.”

Player nodded.

“Why are you here?”

“I told you that.”

“You told me why you’re staying,” Clarence said, “why did you show up in the first place?”

“Because I got a message saying you were looking for me,” Player reached for the bowl of water on the furnace. It was warm, almost hot.

The man laughed a little, “I didn’t think you’d listen to those.”

Player didn’t reply. He was dipping a cloth into the hot water.

Clarence watched him do it, “What’s that for?”

“Those bites,” Player said.

“Does that work?”

Player nodded, “It stings though.”

Clarence scooted higher on the pillows and held out his hands. His forearms were spotted with bites.

“How did this happen?”

“Guess,” He winced as Player took his right hand.

“You used your arms to shield your face?” He examined the bites closely. They were swollen to the size of pebbles.

“Good guess,”

“Okay,” Player said, “this is going to hurt.” He lowered Clarence’s hand into the bowl of water. The man squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists.

“That’s not water,” he growled.

“It’s got salt in it,” Player admitted, “it makes the swelling go down.”

“Okay,” Clarence said. He put his other hand into the water and winced again. He cursed for a few seconds, using words Player hadn’t even heard before.

“The doctors didn’t do this?” Player used one hand to steady Clarence’s arms.

“No,” He winced, “They said something about not knowing what to use.”

Player rolled his eyes. He pulled Clarence’s hands out of the bowl of saltwater and looked at him. They were red all over now, but the bites were going down a little.

“Looking much better,” he said, using the damp cloth to pat at the bites higher up on the man’s arms.

“How do you know what to use?” Clarence asked.

“I got bitten,” Player swabbed at one mark forcefully, “someone else told me about it.”

“Stop! That hurts.”

Player looked up at Clarence, “there’s only one more.”

The man shut his eyes and nodded. He winced as Player patted the last bite with the saltwater.

“There,” Player said, “that’s good for right now.”

Clarence relaxed. He cracked his eyes open and looked down at his hands, “They do look better.”

“They’ll heal,” Player said, “I think I’m too late to do much besides help the swelling.”

“I’m glad you’re doing anything.”

Player set aside the bowl of water, now faintly tinged with blood and other fluids. He took a dry piece of cloth and gave it to Clarence to dry off the excess water. The man did so gently, obviously still in a lot of pain.

“It must have been one hell of a fight,” Player said as he took the cloth away again.

“It was,” Clarence had a faraway look in his eyes, “they came out of nowhere and nearly tore me apart.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“It was late,” Clarence started, “We were about to start heading back to the camp we’d made. It was secure. We’d dug into the side of a hill and barricaded the holes with doors and blocks of wood. No mob was getting through it.”

Player stood up and washed out the bowl. He stayed quiet and listening.

“There were six of us there. Me, another farmer, three former gladiators who fancied themselves adventurers, and a blacksmith. I was with the other farmer. We’d been out collecting seeds and looking at plants. We were watching the animals see which plants were safe to eat. It was getting dark, but we weren’t far away from the hill and the gladiators would come running if we got into trouble. At least, that’s what I thought,” Clarence sneaked a glance at Player, who nodded a little. He was facing the other way, paying attention to the pot on the cooking furnace.

“All of a sudden, three or four of these things come out of the undergrowth right in front of us. They were skeletons, but they were riding cave spiders. Not the little cave spiders, the big ones. The ones you get down in abandoned mineshafts.”

Player shuddered a little.

Clarence took this to mean he was still listening, “Thank Notch they didn’t have bows, or neither of us would have made it. Ricky, that’s the name of the other farmer, he froze in place. I hauled him up and gave him a shove, got in between him and the skeletons. He ran when I told him to, as fast as he could. I thought we were going to make it. We didn’t even need help from the gladiators.

“And then Ricky went down,” he closed his eyes, “he screamed so loud I thought he must have been shot. Of course, I went back for him and hauled him up, gave him another shove. Then I saw that he’d tripped on a hole in the ground. His foot had gotten caught on the lip of this tiny little rabbit hole and he’d gone flat on his face.

“Except there was something looking back at me from inside the hole,” Clarence shuddered and went quiet.

Player had to ask, “What was it?”

“I don’t know. A Zombie, maybe, or a skeleton. It wasn’t an enderman; it didn’t have the right eyes, but it was black. I started to run again. I made it a few blocks, and then it exploded out of the ground and grabbed my ankle. I fell right over, obviously. Lost my bag and my tools. I started yelling for Ricky to help me. He wasn’t that far ahead. He could have come back easy and dragged me out of there. But he didn’t. He looked back at me and saw what was happening, and just ran. Didn’t even look back after that.”

Player fought the urge to give Clarence a hug. He’d do that after the story was over.

“I started kicking it,” Clarence continued, “I heard something crack a couple of times, and the thing was screaming almost as much as I was. The skeleton things were still coming. I could hear the spiders. That thing still had me, so I twisted around and picked up a rock and smashed its wrist twice,” A satisfied smile flickered across his face, “it let go, finally, and I got back up and started moving again, My ankle was in bad shape though. I must have sprained it somewhere along the way.”

“Where were the gladiators?” Player asked.

Clarence lost the smile, “I’m getting there.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Anyway, I was back up on my feet and moving towards camp again. The spider-skeleton things were still behind me, and I just barely managed to outpace them. I was stumbling over stuff in the dark because I lost all my gear and yelling for help at the top of my lungs. I must have gotten turned around in the middle of the struggle with the thing in the hole because I found myself facing the skeleton-spider things again after a couple minutes. There were only two of them that time, which was nice except that I could hear zombies and endermen nearby, plus my leg was basically useless by then and I didn’t have anything to defend myself with. So I stopped and turned around, and right then the other two spider-skeletons dropped out of the tree above me.”

Player winced in sympathy.

Clarence put his hand up over his face, demonstrating how he had shielded himself. After a second he let them drop. “I’m lucky the skeletons didn’t seem too keen on using their swords,” he said, “they would have ripped me apart. I thought I was dead anyway, but I did my best to stop the spiders from biting me, which went terrifically as you can see. The other two joined the ambushers and they were having a field day with my arms and trying to reach my neck. I was stuck there, they were too heavy to throw off, and I was still screaming for help. Finally, the gladiators reached me. I saw them come through the trees. And then they stopped. They were right there, I could see them, and they just stood there watching. I think they must have seen what was coming, but--,” he choked off and had to take a deep breath, “they could have helped. They could have tried to get me away in time.”

Player started to reach out a hand but stopped himself. He didn’t want to shake Clarence’s focus.

“That thing in the ground,” The man said, “I don’t know what it was, I never saw it clearly, but it had come up out of the ground by then. I was laying there, watching the gladiators, calling for them to help me and trying to fight against the spiders at the same time. Then the gladiators ran. They just turned and ran like nether away from me. Then the spiders went, and the skeletons, and all the other monsters, until it was just me on my back, bleeding, and that thing. Thank Notch, I didn’t ever actually see it. I don’t think I could have handled it.

“It grabbed me by the arm,” he reached up with his good hand and touched the sling, “jerked it right out of its socket. It didn’t need leverage or something to brace against. It was just ‘pop.’ I was in pain already from the bites, but it was nothing compared to that. Everything went white and black, I couldn’t register anything besides that I was in pain and I was screaming. When I regained some of my senses, I was on my face being dragged through bushes and brambles. The part of me that was against the ground was nearly ripped to shreds.” he touched the bandage on his face, “I can still see out of that eye, and everything seems to work properly. I was lucky.”

Player only nodded. He was trying not to imagine being in that much pain.

“That was when I realized I was being pulled underground,” Clarence said, “back to the hole the thing had come out of. I started clawing at the dirt, trying to stop myself. When that didn’t help I tore at the thing’s hand if it was a hand. I hit it and bit it and basically tore my own fingers apart trying to escape. I finally got a rock again and bashed it a few times. It dropped me within a few blocks of that damn hole, and I crawled as fast as I could away from it. It grabbed me again, of course, and pulled me down and--” He stopped talking again, and took another deep breath. “It was a cave,” he said finally, “as soon as it left, and that took a while, I crawled to the only source of light in the place and ended up back on the surface. It was midday by the time I made it out. I think the others had given up on me, but I started screaming again almost as soon as I saw the sky and they found me. They brought me back, sort of. Ricky and two of the Gladiators were all for leaving me behind after a day of hauling me around. We weren’t that far away from here. If they weren’t carrying me, they probably could have made it back within 24 hours.”

Player nodded. He had his fists clenched in his lap, but he contained his anger.

“I don’t think they knew I could hear them,” Clarence explained, “but they hauled me back anyway, and now here I am.”

Player kept his promise to himself and hugged the man. He felt small and fragile against Player, weak with pain and fatigue from telling the long story. Clarence hugged him back, balling his good hand into Player’s shirt.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Clarence said, “of all of my friends from before, I’m glad it’s you.”

Player smoothed his hair down, “I’m happy to be here. I missed company.”

Clarence let go again and slumped back. He looked tired but satisfied and untroubled for the first time since Player had arrived. “I’d like to go back there eventually,” he said.

Player was surprised, “After all that?”

Clarence nodded excitedly, “It was beautiful there, so colorful and vibrant, and full of good things to eat and new things to explore.” He grinned at Player, “Besides, the reason I’m so scared by that story is that Ricky and those gladiator assholes abandoned me. I would have been fine if they had stepped in and helped me run. Instead, they saved themselves and I suffered.”

Player nodded. He knew that feeling.

“All I need to feel safe there are people who will protect me as well as themselves.” Clarence was looking at him meaningfully.

Player smiled, “If you really want me there I’ll go, but I’m going mining too. Don’t expect me to stay with you all the time looking at plants.”

Clarence laughed, “I would never. I’ll go down mining with you if you spend some time looking at plants with me.”

Player thought about it, “Let me figure out if that’s a good idea or not.”

“Okay,” Clarence did not miss that Player was being playful. He smirked. “Are you going to actually feed me what’s in that pot or just let the smell torture me?”

Player looked up at the pot, “I forgot.” He stood and grabbed a bowl from the counter. He ladled soup into it carefully, trying to avoid the larger chunks of vegetables.

“It looks like it has milk in it,” Clarence said.

“It does,” Player helped him sit up all the way and placed a thin slab of wood across his lap.

Clarence gave him a dubious look, “I might throw up. Not because it’s not good. Because of the bites.”

“Just try it.”

He took a spoonful and tasted it, then swallowed. He pulled a face, “Don’t become a chef, okay?”

Player laughed, “I don’t plan on it.”

Despite complaining, Clarence ate the rest of the bowl and asked for more. Player insisted that he waited for ten minutes in case he threw up, but when this didn’t happen, he joined Clarence in eating most of the food over the next half hour. The injured man ate much more than Player did, probably because he had not been able to eat anything substantial in the past three days.

Clarence went back to sleep almost immediately after eating. He laid back against the pillows and watched Player moving around the house through his one good eye.

“Am I hallucinating?” he said after a while.

“I don’t think so.”

“It feels like I am.”

Player checked his temperature and found that he was back to normal. That was good. “Try to sleep,” he said, “I’m going to get more water.”

Clarence nodded a little. He closed his eye again.

Player left the house, shivering because it was much colder outside now. He didn’t want to think about Clarence staying two nights in that house alone with no heat. He made his way to the well and attached the bucket to the hook on the end of the rope and lowered it into the pit. When it was full, he hauled it back up and detached it. Clarence wasn’t asleep when he got back.

Player went to the counter first.

“Where are you staying?” Clarence said.

Player paused, “I could go find an inn I guess. Is there one here?”

“I think so, if that’s what you want to do.”

Player finished scrubbing the pot and set it upside down to dry. He dried off his hands. “I could stay here,” he said, “I’m here for as long as you need me.”

Clarence sat up and gazed at him.

“You’re going to start walking around tomorrow,” Player told him, “especially if you want to go back over the mountains.”

Clarence pulled a face, “That’s going to hurt.”

“You can start some of those seeds. I’d love to see a walnut tree.”

Clarence grinned. He held out his good arm and beckoned Player over.

“What?” Player sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Thank you. If you want anything in return I can--”

“I don’t want anything,”

Clarence hugged him around the neck. “You’re staying here.”

Player hugged him back, “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Why were you sending messages asking for me?”

Clarence shook his head, “I sent messages to everyone. You just arrived instead of sending a reply.”

“So you have heard from Bit and Ivy,” Player sat back.

Clarence nodded, “they’re both busy with their own villages. Spark is working on some kind of wall made of trees. It sounds like a big project.”

“Do they know you’re hurt?”

“Supposedly. I sent them letters about going on an expedition. None of them have responded. The doctors said they sent messages when I came back hurt.”

“How far away are they?”

“They should have been here by now.”

Player sighed. Clarence was lonely and scared, and he thought he had been abandoned by his friends twice over. It was no wonder Player meant so much to him suddenly.

“I’m glad you showed up first,” Clarence said, “you’re a better listener than Ivy is, and Bit doesn’t know about taking care of people.”

“What about Spark?”

Clarence laughed a little, “Are you kidding? I thought she was supposed to be my best friend, but she didn’t really give a damn about me.”

“That can’t be true,” Player said, “she was your partner.”

Clarence shook his head, “Believe me, she doesn’t give a single shit.”

“Okay.”

“I’m really tired.”

Player nodded, “Go to sleep. I’m going to take a shower before I set up on the couch.”

Clarence relaxed. “Okay. You know where the bathroom is?”

Player nodded. He stood up and walked to the door of the room.

He watched Clarence snuggle down into the pillows from across the room. The man was very tired. All he wanted to do was sleep, that was obvious.

The bathroom was in a separate building from the house. It seemed communal, but Player was the only one in it. He showered with cold water, wincing all the while.

Being around Clarence was difficult, but he liked being around the boy alone instead of with Bit and Ivy. Clarence was sweet by himself, but being around other people made him harsh.

“How did this happen?” Player asked himself. “They just left him out there? What scared them that badly?” It was a puzzle, that was for sure. What mob would have scared gladiators enough to make them run for their lives?

More importantly, what kind of gladiator would leave Clarence alone while he was being attacked?

He got out of the shower and dried himself off. He wanted to watch Clarence closely. He could throw up in his sleep.

He put his clothes back on and went back to the house. Clarence was deeply asleep. He was on his side facing away from the room.

Player checked his forehead one last time and found that Clarence wasn’t running a fever and wasn’t cold. He stroked Clarence’s hair.

“You’ll be okay,” He told him, “I’ll make sure.”

Clarence stirred, but didn’t wake up.

Player took his sleeping bag out of his bag and spread it over the sofa. He kicked off his shoes and crawled inside it. It was gritty on the inside with dirt and sand, but he was used to that by now.

He fell asleep watching Clarence breathe.


	28. What's What They Say

“Do you know how the human brain responds to care?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Just getting hugged can make us feel all kinds of endorphins.”

“Yes. Dopamine, Serotonin, and Oxytocin of course.”

“All of which get kicked into overdrive if someone is caring for us. Making us food, talking to us.”

“Yes, thank you for explaining to me for the seventeenth time why everyone likes the cafeteria workers.”

“No, that’s not the point.”

“What then?”

“I’m saying that when the techs working in our boy’s friend’s room come in and start chatting, not to get so defensive.”

“What was I supposed to do? They were all gooey about it. It was gross.”

“That’s because what they’re seeing on their screens is making them feel gooey. They see Oxytocin spikes and they say, ‘that’s so cute.’”

“You know something?”

“What?”

“They’re right. It’s adorable, but they don’t need to broadcast it.”

* * *

Player watched Clarence plant the strawberries, marveling at the patience of the man. The seeds were tiny, barely visible to the naked eye. Clarence was taking two or three of them at a time and putting them into the flowerpots Player had gathered for him. He slipped and fumbled several times, and it was obvious that not being able to use one arm was detrimental to the work.

Player was sitting across from Clarence, on a chair, leaning forward with his legs crossed beneath him. His shoes were off.

Clarence brushed a few seeds off his hands and sprinkled dirt over flowerpots. He poured a little water over each one, just enough to wet the soil. He sat back and smiled at Player.

“That’s it?” Player asked.

Clarence nodded. He looked satisfied with himself.

Player leaned over the flowerpots. The dirt was stirring already.

“They never slowed down the growth rate,” Clarence said, “they should be grown by the end of the week.”

Player shook his head in disbelief.

“If they survive that long,” Clarence said, “strawberries are tricky. Help me put them by the windows.”

Player stood up and took two of the pots to the window sill. Clarence stood carefully and took one, then sat on the edge of the bed. He was still sore. He was walking using a crutch outside, but it had been two days since he was confined to bed.

“You want to show them off,” Player said as he placed the last of the five pots in the sunlight.

“All I have left is what was in my pockets. I want to rub it in their faces that what I had is more valuable than their whole lives’ work.”

“That’s harsh.”

“They left me there.”

Player nodded. He was watching the strawberry plants push up through the soil in the pot. They were bowed over, still half underground.

“Have you ever had a strawberry before?” Clarence asked.

Player nodded again, absently.

“They were expensive before. It must have cost you a fortune.”

“No,” Player smiled, “Hero had them. I don’t know how he got them.”

“You just had the one?”

“There were probably,” Player closed his eyes so he could remember, “ten of them.”

Clarence made a surprised noise.

“They were small,” Player said, “I remember because Hero ate one in one bite, but they were so sweet.”

Clarence didn’t ask anything else.

Player turned around after a second. Clarence was watching him, his eyes large and dark.

“Do you want something?” Player asked.

“No. It’s okay. I’m just resting for a second.”

Player walked over to him and knelt down, “You sure?”

“I’m okay. Just a little sore.”

“How’s your face?”

“Still sliced up.”

Player turned his head with one hand and touched the bandages. Clarence winced at the touch. “It doesn’t look swollen.”

“Player,”

“Yes?”

“You’re doting.”

“I don’t care.”

A smile flashed over his face, “I didn’t think so.”

Player suppressed an urge to hug him. He stood up and went back to the table the Strawberry seeds were on.

“You get spacey when you talk about Hero,” Clarence said.

Player nodded. He swept the excess soil into a little pile and scooped it into his hand. “I know I do.”

“Do you miss him?”

Player thought about it. He knew Clarence was hurting still. The man wanted to be cared for more than anything else. Player knew that feeling, so he chose his words carefully. “Not really. I just have a couple questions I feel like he could probably answer.”

“Like what?”

Player shook his head, “They are really stupid. You’ll start laughing at me.” He let the extra dirt fall into an empty flowerpot. He swept his hand over the table again, making sure he hadn’t missed any, then he stacked the empty flowerpots up and put them in the corner of the room by the door.

“Come on, tell me.” Clarence demanded.

Player laughed, “You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I want to ask him what we’re supposed to be doing here.”

Clarence didn’t respond immediately. Player turned and looked at him. He was actually taking it seriously. His brow was furrowed and he was looking down at his good hand. Then he laughed.

“See?” Player said.

“Sorry,” Clarence said, “I just realized that I have no idea.”

Player allowed a smiled to tug at his mouth.

“If we’re right and this is a game,” Clarence said, “then there must be a goal.”

“But what is it?” Player asked.

Clarence shook his head, “I have no idea.”

“I don’t think anyone does.”

“Why do you think Hero will?”

Player shrugged, “I just do. I don’t know why.” That was a lie, but he didn’t dare tell Clarence that Hero was Herobrine.

Clarence got up and limped to the windowsill. “They look okay,” he said, “you were right. This is a good idea.”

“I still want to see the tree.”

“Someday.”

Player was picking up his pack. It was considerably lighter than when he had arrived. He was running out of things to trade for food. Clarence said he had a field, but Player had looked at it. It was barren. He couldn’t sew seeds any more than the farmers could mine diamonds.

Clarence started coughing again. He was still having fits at regular intervals.

“Okay,” Player said, turning on him, “back in bed. Right now. Go.”

Clarence tried to stop coughing, stifling it with his hand. He waved Player away, but he was forced back into bed over the next minute. Player half-carried him to the corner of the room and sat him down.

Player passed Clarence a glass of milk, and he gulped it down. That helped. Milk always seemed to help.

“Thanks,” Clarence said.

Player felt his forehead. It was cold again. “You rest.”

Clarence groaned, “This is such a pain.”

“I know, but if you ever want to recover all the way you have to get through it.”

Clarence grumbled, but he pulled the blankets up again and rolled onto his side.

“On the bright side,” Player said, “the doctors say we can take off that sling tomorrow.”

Clarence grinned, “Finally.”

Player stood up and took the flowerpots outside. By the time he got back in, Clarence was in an exhausted sleep. He’d been sleeping a lot lately, which was better than forcing himself to stay awake.

Player sat down on the edge of the bed to think. He was beginning to lose sight of his goal. He had started out here wanting to find Herobrine, but this was more than he could handle. All he wanted to do now was keep Clarence safe any way he could. The man was so in pain. It made him at least partially understand what Hero had seen when he first met him.

Someone started pounding on the door

Player started, and Clarence sat up fast behind him. He grabbed Player’s sleeve. “Who’s that.”

Player shrugged, “I don’t know.” He stood up and approached the door. Clarence swung his legs over the edge of the bed behind him.

As soon as Player opened the door, the person on the other side pushed past him. They let out a strangled cry as they saw Clarence and darted over to him.

“Ivy!” Clarence held up his good hand in warning, but she hugged him anyway. Player heard Clarence gasp in pain and started over to them.

Bit pushed past him too then, nearly throwing Player off balance. He also rushed Clarence, and this time the sound the man made bordered on a scream. Both of the visitors flinched back, then stepped away sharply as Clarence shoved them.

“What are you doing?” he gasped, rubbing at his shoulder.

“Clarence, are you okay? We just heard about what happened.” Ivy seemed close to tears.

Player closed the door and sighed. He didn’t want to face this thing again. On the bright side, maybe he could sneak out and go mining now that someone else was here.

“Player,” Clarence said, distracting him. He was beckoning him over.

“What is it?” Player walked across the room and stepped to the side, around Bit and Ivy.

Clarence pulled Player down onto the bed next to him. “Player’s been taking care of me,” He said to Bit and Ivy, 

“Thank Notch someone was here,” Bit said. He was still looking at Clarence’s bandaged face and arm, shaking his head slowly.

Ivy was not nearly as friendly. She gave Player a long look, “What have you been doing?”

“Mostly making food,” Clarence answered for him, “but he treated the spider bites two day ago.” He leaned into Player’s side, surprising him.

“Is your arm okay?” Player asked him, noticing the way Clarence was favoring his arm.

“I’ll survive.”

“Did we hurt you more?” Bit asked.

“Just tweaked it,” Clarence said, “it’s okay.”

“Oh no,” Ivy said, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” the man snapped, sounding almost hostile.

Player glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. Clarence didn’t look good. He was worked up.

“What happened?” Bit asked finally.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Clarence said.

“Are those strawberries?” Ivy asked, looking at the windowsill, where the flower pots were just starting to show green leaves over their rims.

“Yes,”

“So you found what you wanted?” She asked Clarence.

He nodded, and his interest sparked, “All kinds of things. It’s amazing there.”

“What did you find?”

“Strawberries and blueberries,” Clarence said, “walnuts, oranges, peaches, all kinds of vegetables growing wild.”

The other farmers’ eyes were huge, “and you brought all that back?”

“No,” Clarence said. He gestured towards his injured arm, “something came up.”

“Oh,” Ivy said, “right.”

Bits attention had switched to Player, “Why are you here?”

“I got a message saying someone was looking for me,” Player said, “I hiked for about two months, and when I got here I found Clarence with a couple doctors standing over his bed.”

Clarence nodded.

“And you decided to stick around?” Ivy said.

“No, they asked me watch him for a few days and I said yes.”

“Why?”

Player looked down at Clarence. The man had his eyes closed again. He was listening. “Because it was obvious he was in a tough spot and no one else seemed to be looking after him.”

“My fault,” Clarence murmured, “I didn’t try to make friends.”

“And the doctors weren’t very much help, so I stepped in.”

“Thank you,” Bit said without hesitating. He reached out to take Player’s hand and shook it. “Really, thank you.”

“I’m not your property,” Clarence muttered, “it’s not like you hired a sitter.”

Player ignored that for the moment, “Don’t thank me. Clarence already has many times.” He cut Bit off as he opened his mouth, “No, I don’t want payment and no you don’t have to do anything for me.”

“You’re getting paid,” Clarence protested, “next time I go back there you’re coming with me.”

Ivy and Bit both stared at him.

“You’re going back?” They said together.

“When?” Bit said.

“Why?” Ivy asked.

Clarence smirked, “As soon as I’m back to normal and because there was a bunch of stuff there I didn’t get to explore.”

“Going over the mountains again,” Ivy shook her head, “you know what they say is over there.”

Clarence nodded, “I think it’s bullshit.”

“Herobrine?” Bit said. He shivered, “I don’t think so. I was over there for a couple days. It just feels wrong.”

Ivy was nodding.

Clarence looked up at Player, “You okay?”

Player realized he had his fists clenched and relaxed them. “I’m fine.”

The man looked up at him with concern, “You believe in him too?”

Player shrugged, “After what you told me, I’m sure that there is something over there that isn’t good. Herobrine seems like a valid option.”

“I saw one freak mob,” Clarence protested, “it doesn’t mean the devil himself is living over there.”

He shrugged, “I’m not taking sides.

“You know,” Ivy said to Player, “you never gave the impression you liked us very much.”

Everyone looked at her, Bit and Clarence aghast, Player with resigned expectation.

“And after what Gaimon said about you, I don’t know if i like you being around Clarence without supervision.”

Player winced, “Can we not talk about that?” He scooted away from Clarence anyway, almost tipping the man over.

“Sure. We’ll figure that out later,” She stood up, “just tell me why you’re here.”

Player took a deep breath. “Since the game reset,” he said, “I’ve been on my own, in my own house, finding my own food. It gave me a lot of time to think about stuff, and I guess somewhere along the line I made up my mind about some things. When I got here, I found someone who I liked a lot who needed help, so I did what I could. That’s all there is to it.”

“What did Gaimon say about you?” Clarence asked.

Player shook his head, “Let’s not talk about it.”

“Yes, let’s ignore what he said right before Hero killed him, shall we?” Ivy said.

Player put his hands up, “Don’t pin what Hero did on me.”

“I’m not, I’m just asking you why it happened.”

“I don’t know,” Player sighed, “Hero was weird. I know that. You know that. Everyone who met the guy knew that. There was something wrong with him. I have no idea why he decided to stab Gaimon.”

“Why were you matched with him though?” Ivy asked, “are you suggesting you’re like him somehow.”

Player shook his head. He laughed a little, “What’s my number?” he asked.

Ivy blinked at him, “What?”

“It’s 4979, the highest number,” Player said, “there were an odd number of people in the game when those partners were assigned. I was the odd person out, so I got the weird companion.”

“That actually makes a sort of sense,” Bit said after a pause.

Player said a little thank you that the man wasn’t a genius. There was a huge hole in his logic. “As for Gaimon,” he went on, “he was mad at me. I get that. I don’t know why he said that stuff, but it’s already messed me up enough, so if we can just forget about it and move on, I’d be grateful.”

Clarence was looking concerned. He coughed once, and Player glanced at him. He felt like running away again. He wanted to go back to his house in the middle of nowhere and keep trying to make bad pottery and play around with the wolf. He wanted to find Herobrine. Hero was good at making things go away.

“Look,” He said, “I haven’t gotten anything to eat tonight, and I’m almost out of tradeable goods. I’m either going to have to go out and find a cave or someone else is going to foot the bill tonight.”

Bit got to his feet, “I have stuff I can trade. I didn’t bring much with me, but we can get by for tonight.”

Ivy sat up, “I can pitch in,” she turned to Player, “of course your stuff is probably worth more than ours in a place like this.”

“I’ll find something to mine tomorrow,” Player said, “don’t worry. Now that someone else is here, I can leave the house more.”

Clarence made an offended noise, “I’m not going to die from being along for an hour.”

“I know,” Player told him, “but I’d be gone all day and maybe all night.”

Clarence nodded a little. 

“We need to find places to sleep too,” Ivy said.

“There’s an inn down the road,” Clarence supplied. Player frowned at him.

“Okay, we’ll look at it.”

“Be back in a few minutes,” Bit said over his shoulder as they left.

Player heard them start talking as the door was closing. It was definitely about him. He sat still for a long time, looking at his hands in his lap.

Clarence touched his arm gently, “Are you okay?”

Player nodded, “I’m fine. I just need a second.”

Clarence put his good arm around Player’s back. “I’m sorry about that.”

“She’s right,” Player said, “I wasn’t very friendly before.”

“I never noticed. I figured you were shy and scared.”

Player blinked at him, “Really?”

Clarence nodded, “And I know that Hero killed Gaimon, but it wasn’t your fault, so she needs to get over that.”

Player managed a little smile at that.

“What did Gaimon say to you that had her so worked up?”

He lost the smile and looked down, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is she afraid you’ll hurt me because of it?”

“I guess so,” Player said, “which is stupid no matter how you look at it.” Clarence had been initiating all of the contact between them since they had met each other for the first time. He couldn’t pinpoint the occasion that had Ivy so nervous.

“So don’t worry about it.”

“I think I’ll go home tomorrow,” Player said quietly.

“Please don’t,” Clarence gave him a little shake, “you’ve been taking care of me, not them. They’ll probably poison me by mistake or something.”

Player laughed, “I don’t think so.”

“Okay, but you’re staying anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re lying about just getting the message about me being hurt. Their villages are only a day’s journey on foot, and the messengers have horses. They waited four days before they decided to show up.”

Player leaned his head against Clarence. “Okay. I’ll stick it out.”

“Just remember: I find them just as irritating as you do.”

That got a real laugh.

“No, really, Ivy is way too dramatic and Bit never thinks about anything before he does it.”

“I know that.”

“So don’t look so down,” Clarence hugged him tightly for a moment, “it’s nothing to worry about.”

“I know,” Player assured him.

He still found himself missing being alone for the first time in a long time that night, waiting to fall asleep on the couch. Ivy had not been very happy that he was staying in the house with Clarence. It was haunting him a little.


	29. It's All Lies

Excerpt from an essay published online by Benjamin D. Pond

There has been some speculation about extrasensory perception in connection to non-human entities, but what appears to everyday people to be paranormal is anything but. Often times, it is a smell that nonhumans detect long before seeing a specific person, or their ears are sensitive enough to hear human heartbeats from a long way off. Both of these are biological adaptations.

However, it is totally accurate to say that non-humans have extrasensory perception. When asked to identify someone behind a solid wall, a nonhuman can perform the task with up to 95% accuracy in terms of sex, height, skin color, and sometimes name. To put this into perspective, a norman human guessing randomly has an accuracy of about 10% guessing two or more of these attributes correctly. When non-humans are asked to identify other non-humans through solid walls, they are 100% accurate. They maintain this accuracy up to 30 meters away.

* * *

Herobrine leaned into the hole left by the piece of bedrock he had removed. He put his hand flat against the obsidian. There was definitely something out there, something big.

His presence would occasionally draw up all kinds of monsters from the game’s coding. He was used to manipulating that energy, making it into something he could use. He couldn’t use that power right now: it was suppressed when he was imprisoned. This feeling was along the same grain, but it was nastier, more feral. It was definitely the kind of monster that would send most players running in the other direction.

Herobrine could deal with it. It wasn’t so big as to pose a challenge to him. He would have dealt with it already if he wasn’t stuck in this prison, and the irony was that now that there was a monster outside his cell, the chances of getting out were fast approaching zero. He needed a player to come down here and break open the obsidian, and that wasn’t going to happen if there was a monster outside the door.

“Well,” he said to himself, “time to start thinking of alternatives.”

Of which there were two: Stick it out or go back to sleep. The second option was starting to look very inviting. There wasn’t much of a chance of someone getting past that monster and managing to free him, even if a player happened to be that naive.

Herobrine squirmed backward out of the hole and lifted the bedrock back into place.

He was out of options. He couldn’t break the obsidian. He couldn’t call for help. He certainly couldn’t ask the damn Janus woman for anything. She was too stupid, or too smart, to do anything he requested.

For the first time since he had woken up, Herobrine walked across the room to his bed and lay down on it. He stared at the bedrock ceiling for five minutes, trying to find a workaround. Nothing occurred to him.

He let out a sigh and covered his eyes with one arm. Maybe it would look better if he left it alone for a bit. He needed to sleep so his mind could focus. He hadn’t slept properly since before the reset that had landed him here. He wasn’t counting the induced sleep: it did absolutely nothing for his body and mind. He had caught a few minutes of sleep in the room he shared with Player towards the end of his stay. That was also the last time he had used a bed properly.

How long had it been since he thought about Player? How long had it been before he thought about anything besides a way to escape this place?

It didn’t matter now.

“Hey,” he said to the surrounding room, “system.”

No one replied.

“Come on, I know you’re listening. Notch?”

Still nothing.

“Anyone?”

Nothing and no one was listening to him. There was no way to request to be put back into a deep sleep.

A slow cold dread seeped over him. He was going to be stuck here in this tiny room, conscious and thinking until he figured out a way to escape.

Herobrine forced himself to breathe deeply and lie still. Later. He would figure it all out later. Right now what he needed to do was take a nap and relax. He could worry about everything else later.

He rolled onto his side, facing away from the room. What he really needed were diamonds. Three of them ideally, but two would do. He could probably do the job with a hoe, or he could try and think like the players upstairs and make his own sort of pickaxe. He would figure it out later. Later, later, later.

He closed his eyes, shutting out the world. He concentrated on breathing, on focussing through the dread and anxiety on something good. A meal, or a peaceful time, or a particularly appalling house he had destroyed.

His ears popped.

Herobrine sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He stood up and crossed to the desk, closed the book on it and put it on the bookshelf.

The woman materialized behind him. He picked up the book beside the one he had just put down and pretended to be reading.

“Let’s talk about 4979,” Janus Dane said.

Herobrine closed his eyes. The one thing he did not want to talk about. Of course. He did not respond. After a few moments of silence, he sensed her growing restless.

“What about Player?”

“That name first. You call him Player, but all of the people in the game are players.”

“That’s his name, it’s what they all call him.”

“Ah, I see.”

He set the book down and turned to face her. He was resigned to this. He would find some way of freeing himself from this torment later.

“You mentioned yesterday that you were happy for him because he was getting better. What did you mean by that.”

Herobrine shrugged, “Someone did something to him. I don’t know who and I don’t know what, but it’s messed him up real bad. If he’s helping someone, he’s getting better.”

“And you care about his wellbeing?”

“In the same way you care about the wellbeing of a colleague at work.”

Janus frowned at him like she knew he was lying. Either that or she didn’t give a damn about any of her colleagues and didn’t see why anyone would.

Herobrine couldn’t help himself, “Is he still doing okay?”

Janus looked down, “He’s returning to his normal state it seems.”

He shrugged, doing his best to not let the pang of empathy show. Player’s isolation was a self-imposed one, but he could still identify. Something of it must have been visible because Janus’s next question seemed to be spontaneous.

“Why do you care about him?”

Herobrine made a snap decision. “I was told a long time ago by someone very different than me that someday I would come face-to-face with a person I could not fight and could not defeat.”

Janus shifted forward a little. Her shoulders lifted a little, her mouth turned up at the edges. She became engaged for the first time in weeks.  _ She doesn’t have her mother’s discipline. _

“And you believe that Player is this person?” She asked.

Herobrine shook his head, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is timid and afraid, too slow with a sword and too eager to run and hide from problems he should face head-on. If I were to really try to hurt him, and I wanted to a couple times, I could cut him to pieces.”

She sagged back down. “Do you know who this person will be then?”

Herobrine nodded, “I know what they will be like.”

“Can you describe them?”

“They will be male, and they will look like me,” he held up a hand as she went to speak, “there are many people who look like me. That isn’t really important.” She closed her mouth and nodded. Herobrine continued, “This person will be stubborn and determined, quick-witted and good in a crisis, adept with weapons but probably not very fond of them. Probably they will be kind, not cruel, and they will have a deep-seated dislike for me and all I represent to them.”

“And that is this person who you’ve been waiting for?”

“Yes.”

“Why on earth are you waiting for someone who will hate you?”

“I was told they would one day arrive. It’s the only expectation I have for the future.”

“What about beating the game?”

Herobrine laughed harshly, “I beat this game a long time ago. There’s no challenge in it for me. It’s tedious.”

She stopped looking around the room and faced him, “Then you know how.”

He nodded.

“And you could tell the players.”

“If I wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“Not really. It’s more amusing for me to keep them here.”

“Ah, I see.”

“That and I’m stuck in this cage. If you let me out I might sow a few seeds in gratitude.”

“Not going to happen.”

He sighed, “Fine. Doom them all to spending their whole lives in this game.” He reached for his sword on an impulse. There was one thing he hadn’t tried yet.

“All you’re going to do is tear them apa--”

Herobrine sprang at her, the sword already outstretched. It slid neatly into her chest, but as expected it had no effect whatsoever. It didn’t even feel like stabbing someone. It was like thrusting the blade through water.

Janus looked down at where the sword was stuck in her chest. She seemed puzzled but not in any pain.

Herobrine sighed and pulled out the sword. She wasn’t in survival mode. He had half-known that, but he thought maybe he would be lucky. The woman reached up to feel the place on her chest the blade had protruded from, she looked at him again. This time there was real fear in her eyes.

“Do you know where the players in this game go when they are killed by mobs or each other?” Herobrine asked her.

“No.”

“The other players think they respawn somewhere else, far away. They’re half right. The players that are killed end up in the Nether where they serve a short sentence and then return to the Overworld.”

“And you know this how?”

“The Nether is my realm, and I know whenever a player sets foot there. At present, there are about fifty people in the Nether. It’s been fluctuating slightly.”

Janus looked fascinated, “For what purpose would that happen?”

“To make it more real, is my guess. There need to be consequences to dying in this mode. It’s not like your stupid survival games settings.”

“They never mentioned that tweak to me.”

“They probably don’t know.”

Janus sighed. She returned to her intended topic. “What makes you so certain Player is not the person you’ve been waiting for?”

“He’s just not. It’s a gut feeling.”

“That is a relief”

Herobrine scowled. He wanted to yell at her, explain that he didn’t want only to destroy and kill. He had friends and people he cared about. He wasn’t so intent on ripping Player apart as ensuring the man returned to his own world. Of course, he couldn’t say any of that. His relationship with Janus Dane was built on two facts: that he was a monster, and that he was ever so slightly stupid. Neither was true of course.

Janus was getting nervous. Her half-hour limit was almost up. “I’ll be back later,” she said, “we need to follow up on this.”

“Of course,” Herobrine said, “see you tomorrow.” His ears popped again as she logged out.

He went back to the bed and crawled into it, kicking off his shoes as he went. A nap would help. Not thinking about Player would help more.

No matter how he looked at it, Player was a distraction. A nuisance, an annoyance. When he thought about Player, he became restless and lethargic all at once. Herobrine did not want to even begin to sort out his feelings towards the man.

Herobrine closed his eyes and put an arm under his head. The system had told him his assignment was to watch Player, to accompany him. Whatever that meant. He would do it, of course, but only because the System was one of the few entities that could really hurt him.

He couldn’t really complete the job stuck in this cave anyway. He was still trapped.

Herobrine thumped himself in the forehead. “Stop thinking,” he growled. It would look better in the morning.

He closed his eyes and willed all the light sources in the room to go out. There was nothing he could do, so why worry about it?


	30. There's Fear Here

“She’s still in and out of that room all day,”

“I think 0000 is throwing her for a loop.”

“Oh, he definitely is.”

“I’m worried about our boy”

“Why?”

“I think being with the people he’s with is making him soft.”

“And we don’t need soft people, is that it?”

“No, we need soft people, but this one has steel in him. He’ll end up tearing himself apart trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do.”

* * *

Clarence recovered quickly from his injuries under the circumstances. The process slowed significantly after the arrival of Ivy and Bit. Player put it down to the increase in physical activity.  As it was, the man was back on his feet before the end of the week. That in itself was impressive. He talked constantly about returning to the valley beyond the mountains and discovering whatever secrets it held.

This determination vexed his friends as much as it did Player. Twice he heard Ivy and Bit discussing it outside the house. Once they included him in the conversation, but he had no more insight than they did. It seemed Clarence was not disturbed by his attack as much as being left behind by people he trusted.

Privately Player always noted a flicker of uncertainty in the man’s face when he talked about returning with all three of them. In those moments, he looked very child-like. It scared Player a little, but he suppressed the feeling. It would pass, and he was not going to spoil this.

And so he found himself first helping to gather supplies for the trip and then preparing to help carry those supplies over the mountains before two weeks had passed.

On the morning they were planning to leave for the journey, Player woke to find Clarence perched on the edge of the sofa beside him.

He sat up with a start, “Clarence?”

The man flinched in return. He looked at Player and then back out the window. “The strawberries died,” he said flatly.

Player looked at the windowsill. The plants were shriveled and brown, parched. “I watched you water them,” he said.

Clarence nodded, “That’s just how it is sometimes.”

“We can get more seeds today,” Player forced some cheer into his voice, “all you need is one hearty plant to get started.”

Clarence half-turned and gave him a smile. “Ya, you’re right. All I need is one good one.” There were a few long seconds of silence before he spoke again, “I’m still sick, Player.”

Played knew that. Clarence still got chills and still had coughing fits. It was to be expected.

“I’m nervous about going back. That place strains relationships. It breaks trust down so easily. If I get dragged down again, I won’t live.”

Player took a deep breath and put his arm around Clarence’s shoulders. It was the first time aside from medical care he had initiated contact. “It won’t happen again,” he said, “Ivy and Bit know you from before. They’ve been your friends for years. They won’t abandon you. I won’t abandon you.”

Clarence gave him a smile, “I believe you about the last part.”

“They’ll die for you, you know that.”

The man nodded. He leaned into Player for a second. “I’m not really worried about me,” he said so quietly Player almost didn’t hear.

“Come on. If we don’t get moving, we’ll have to wait another day.” Player stood up, leaving Clarence where he was. He rolled up his sleeping bag for the first time in weeks.

“Okay,” Clarence said, “I’m coming.”

They met Ivy and Bit on the edge of town and turned West and South, towards a place where a narrow valley cut through the mountains. Clarence had described it as just big enough to squeeze through. 

When Player saw it, the first thought he had was that it didn’t look natural. The crack in the rocks was perfectly straight and incredibly narrow, only about a block-wide along its length. It gave the impression that someone had sliced a piece out of the mountains and lifted it away.

Clarence stepped into it and paused, looking back. Player was still looking at the rock walls on either side of the crack, running his hands over it. It was old stone, like granite, but it felt much denser. Bit and Ivy were eyeing the crevice.

“Isn’t there another way over?” Ivy asked.

“Yes,” Clarence said, “if you want to climb up and over and add three days to the trip.”

“How did they get you back through here?” Player asked. He’d found a smear of blood on the stone and was hiding it under his hand.

“It hurt,” Clarence shivered, “And it took a long time.”

Player let the subject drop. “Okay. Let’s go.” He followed Clarence into the crack, shuffling along sideways because his shoulders were too wide to face forward. It wasn’t a big deal for him; he was used to cramped spaces. Behind him, Ivy and Bit were a lot less comfortable and confident. Bit was forced to shuffle sideways like Player, but Ivy and Clarence were able to face forward.

The passage was straight, but it narrowed and widened slightly along its length. Sometimes us was wide enough to face forward, sometimes it made Player remove the pick on his back and carry it by his side to squeeze through. They spent a couple hours walking in silence like that. 

Player was beginning to feel the energy people talked about. There was a negative force here. It made his skin crawl to sense it. It felt like the ground was angry at him. It grew over the time it took to squirm through the passage.

Player saw the end first, looking over Clarence’s head. Even he let out a little sigh at the sight. Being out in the open would feel good.

When he stepped out of the passage, he took a breath of air that wasn’t full of rock dust. Then he gasped as the air seemed to be sucked out of his lungs.

Player walked forward slowly, gazing at the view. Finally, he breathed again, a great heave of his chest.

The valley below him sparkled. Waterfalls threw up glints of sunlight into the air and lakes like diamonds managed to reflect the sky. It was a green place. The trees stood tall and proud. Even from up on the mountains they looked old and twisted. It was an ancient place, a place to be quiet and still. Player felt that through the soles of his feet. It came up with the malice and the rage and the fear, and the effect was one of such awe that even Ivy was silent for a long time.

“See?” Clarence said, “something here is wrong.”

Player nodded a little. He leaned forward and peered down the mountainside. Its surface was spotted with small openings, entrances to underground caves. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

He boosted himself over a boulder with one hand and half-slid down the side of the hill, using one hand to slow his descent.

“Player!” Clarence yelled behind him.

Player brought himself to a stop and turned to look up. All three of the farmers were looking down at him. He waved cheerily and examined the hole at his feet. It was dark, but he could dimly see stone a few blocks down. It was too much of a temptation.

Player dropped down into the hole.

“Hey!” Ivy yelled behind him, “We’re here too!”

He ignored her, and instead lit a torch and held it aloft. The cave went deeper into the ground before him. It fell away sharply into a gloom so deep it looked solid.

For the first time in his life, Player felt fear looking into a cave. There was the usual excitement too, but the energy of this place was seeping into him. It was making it hard to continue.

Clarence called his name again. It echoed down the cavern and into the depths below.

Player turned and called back, “I found something! I’m going down for a bit!”

“Don’t you dare!”

He paused for only a moment and then stepped onto the first block of stone below the rim.

Clarence landed in the cave behind him with a grunt. He hurried over. “What are you doing?”

Player pointed downward mutely. He tossed the torch into the darkness. The cave went down about 25 blocks before it stopped, and beyond that he could see another drop-off.

Player paced back and forth on his block, looking for a way down.

“Really now,” Clarence said, walking over, “we can do this when we get to the bottom of the valley.”

“I’m just going to go look.” Player turned all the way around and boosted himself down over the edge. His toes found the next block down and he dropped lightly.

“Player, please.”

Player jumped to the next step down over a gap and then stepped down a long staircase of stone to reach the floor of the next cavern. He turned and looked up at Clarence, “I won’t be long. You guys go find the old camp and set up.”

The man seemed torn for a moment. He paced back and forth, wringing his hands in a way Player found disconcerting. Clarence looked like he wanted to come along.

“It’s okay,” He called up, “I’ll find you.”

Clarence nodded, “Be quick, okay?”

Player waved, forcing a smile onto his face. He turned away frowning. It was strange to be needed like this. He wasn’t sure if he liked it.

“He’s sweet,” he said to himself, “and cute, but I don’t know if I can handle him.”

No one replied to him, of course.

Player started walking, continuing his monologue. The next drop-down was only ten or so blocks away. “Not that Clarence even thinks about this stuff.”

A zombie groaned down a side hallway and Player pulled out another torch and lit it. The light flared up, and he peered into the surrounding gloom for a moment. His hands were shaking, making the flame flicker. His heart was pounding.

“This is so weird,” he mumbled, “zombies aren’t a threat.” He paused for a moment, listening hard. There was nothing more. Player let out an involuntary sigh of relief. The air in the cave was cool and moist and held no hint of rotting meat. That was good.

The next drop was right beside him. He looked down into it and, seeing it wasn’t too deep, jumped down. He landed with a thud that echoed down the halls, and mentally reprimanded himself for making so much noise.

“It’s confusing,” he said to himself, “maybe Ivy is right about staying far away.” That was useless and he knew it. He wanted to be nearby Clarence as much as possible. It made him feel warm and fuzzy. “I can’t help that.”

The floor was sloping down again. That was good. The deeper he went the more valuable resources he’d find. Player scanned the walls of the cave. There was no hint of any ores. Not even coal, which he usually turned up his nose at since the reset. Maybe if he went deeper he would find something.

Maybe the farther they went into this place the more valuable the resources would become.

Player turned to look back up the cave, and his foot slipped on a loose stone. He yelped and went tumbling, rolling uncontrolled down the slope of the cave, getting coated in dust and small pieces of gravel as he went. He lost his torch, but luckily his pick, still on his back, stayed put. It thumped him on the head as he fell.

Something groaned ahead of him, and Player had just enough time to register a flash of green before he rolled into a zombie and bowled it over. It landed on top of him, finally bringing his role to a stop.

Player sat up and scrambled backward, trying to disentangle his legs from the rotting monster. It snarled and snapped at him, and he reached instinctively for his pickaxe. He swung it around and cracked the mob’s head open with a blow. It stopped mid-motion and dropped its head.

Player scooted backward and rested against the wall for a moment. He panted, head on his knees.

“I need to focus,” he said to himself, “stop thinking with things that aren’t my brain.”

The zombie grabbed his foot and pulled him forward with such force that Player screamed. Its mouth was open, leaking dark blood, as it leered at him. He kicked it, heard a crack as he broke its jaw. It dragged him farther forward. Its nails ripped at his pants leg. One of them tore into his skin.

Player seized the pick and slammed it into the monster again. It stopped moving for a moment, then continued crawling up his legs. He hit it again and this time scrambled upright when it was stunned. He brought the tool down on the zombie again and again. Eventually, it became lodged in the rotting skull and in his state he couldn’t pull it free. He stumbled to the wall and gagged, then dry-heaved, just barely keeping his food down.

He had never reacted like this to a mob in all his time. He’d seen other, inexperienced, miners scream and lose their composure, but he’d never come close to it.

There was something in this place that made him want to run away and hide.

Player gasped, “why the Nether did Clarence want to come here?”

He straightened up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The zombie had dissolved and his poor abused pickaxe was sitting on the ground. Its edges were looking pretty rough, and it was probably about to fall apart. He could make another easily enough. That wasn’t an issue.

He had to keep going. He definitely wasn’t going to turn up at the camp empty-handed. Ivy would smirk at him.

The ground was still sloping downwards and he followed it down.

He came to a corner eventually, and beyond it, there was the warm light and heat of lava.

Player dropped his torch and stomped it out with his heel. He stepped around the corner.

The pool of lava was a small one. There was already a stone pathway all the way around it. There were two skeletons halfway submerged in the molten rock, their upper bodies on the stone and legs melted down. They weren’t moving.

Across the lava, at Player’s eye level, was a deposit of diamonds. He felt the fear evaporate as excitement took over. Still, he made himself move slowly around the lava, being very careful not to slip.

The diamonds came out of the stone easily. They almost popped out. He used his hands to wiggle out two of the stones. He used his iron pick to check around the diamonds, but there were only five. On the last stone block, his pick broke neatly in two.

Player threw it into the lava. He turned and looked back up the cave, clutching the diamonds in both hands. If he ran into mobs on the way back he wasn’t going to enjoy himself. He was going to have to cross his fingers and run.

He pulled off his pack and tucked the precious diamonds safely inside. Then he ran, like the scared child he was, as fast as he could out of the cave.

Clarence was pacing around the inside of the dirt bunker wringing his hands. It was almost dark, and Player had not come back from the caves yet.

“Clarence,” Ivy said, “relax. It’s not like we can do anything.”

“I’m worried” Clarence said. He didn’t stop pacing.

Bit chimed in, “He’s made of stern stuff. He’ll make it.”

Clarence whined. He sounded like a small scared animal, and the other two watched him pacing. They made eye contact. Ivy shook her head, perplexed.

“I don’t think he’s that tough,” Clarence said, “the mobs here are stronger. If one of them gets the jump on him, even a zombie, I don’t think he’ll be able to--”

Someone started banging on the door to the shelter.

“Open up!” Player yelled from outside. He banged on the metal again.

Clarence ran to the door and threw it open without even checking through the window. He was pushed back and aside by Player, who turned and slammed the door closed behind him. He was covered in dust and dirt from head to toe and out of breath. His pickaxe was gone.

Clarence let out a cry of delight and threw his arms around the man. Player started and then returned the embrace. He laughed at Clarence, spun him around like a dancer.

“Where have you been?” Ivy asked.

Player gave her a self-satisfied smirk. He disentangled himself from Clarence and pulled off his pack.

“What?” She said, “you managed to find some coal.”

Clarence gasped at the contents before any of the others saw it, jumped up and down.

Player produced five diamonds from his pack and held them out cupped in both hands. The gems were sizeable when not in their inventory storage form, but he had them shrunk down so he could hold them. He tossed one to Ivy and when she caught it it was the size of a chunk of coal, maybe bigger.

“Notch,” she swore, “I didn’t expect that.”

“I’m not completely useless,” Player said in a tone that made Ivy want to brain him with the diamond.

“What happened?” Clarence said, “are you okay?”

“Not too bad,” Player said, “I met a zombie that didn’t go down until I bashed its head in.”

Bit rolled his eyes, “I told you he’d be fine,” he said.

“Did it get you?” Clarence asked.

“A scratch,” Player tapped his right leg, “it’s already closed. Don’t worry about me.”

“What are we going to use these for?” Ivy asked, weighing the diamond.

“I need a new pick,” Player said, “so three will go to that. I’ll be able to find more if we stay here longer. The other two, I don’t know. We can decide later.”

Clarence took the diamond from Ivy and she flinched as it suddenly wasn’t in her hand anymore. He crossed back to Player and gave it to him.

“Thanks,” Player said. He took the diamond and put it back into his bag with the others.

“What about Emeralds?” Bit asked.

“No,” Player said, “sorry. I didn’t see any.”

“Don’t worry about it. If you find some let me know. My community is trying to make a currency.”

“The one I came from was talking about that,” Player said, “I don’t know what they plan to use yet.” He shook his head, throwing stone fragments around the room. “Well, if that’s the worst this place has to offer, I think I can handle it.”

Clarence made a small noise. Player looked down at him and put an arm around him. Clarence had not told either Ivy or Bit about what he had seen or what had happened to him, but they had guessed parts of it. Player’s comment seemed a little insensitive.

Clarence mumbled something and the man patted his head.

Ivy and Bit made eye contact across the room. He rolled his eyes and she wrinkled her nose. They respected Clarence as a person, but they both wondered what had happened to make him bond so tightly to Player. They didn’t really want to ask.


	31. Nightmares are Expected

“I’ve compiled a list of your supposed abilities, 0000.”

“If you’re going to keep pestering me, call me Herobrine.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Whatever you want. Let’s hear it then.”

“From various sources: teleportation within the game, health, speed, strength, and stamina far above the normal, inducing nightmare and hallucinations within the game, ability to read minds--”

“And a thousand other things besides. What do you care?”

“I thought you could tell me which of these powers you actually possess.”

“Within this game all of them. Except for the nightmares and the mind-reading.”

“And why not them?”

“‘Induce’ implies that I intend for those around me to have those dreams. I never intentionally given anyone nightmares, though I’m sure it’s happened by mistake. I’m not sure about the mind-reading I’d never met a real person before you woke me up here, only avatars.”

“And now that there are actual people in the game with you?”

“They feel my presence when they stray too near, I’m sure of that. I’m not sure if they actually have any nightmares, but they definitely know I’m here. As for the mind-reading: so far I’m not aware of any such power so most likely it doesn’t exist”

* * *

True to his word, Player did not return immediately to the caves beneath the valley. Instead, he remained above ground and watched the farmers work. He noticed a difference in their motions compared to the first time that. Before all three of them had separate jobs and clearly defined responsibilities. Now there was scattered randomness to them, like each of them was in it solely for their own gain. Several times he watched all three of them gather the same seeds within the space of an hour.

He spent the first day making his new pickaxe. It was a slow process, and throughout the whole thing, Clarence was almost always in sight. This behavior was starting to concern Player. It didn’t seem healthy.

The thing about making a pick was that it had to be done with good materials. It wouldn’t do to just slap a few sticks and rocks together and call it good. Instead, Player carefully examined each of the five diamonds. He washed them in a creek and then peered into each one. They were good stones, but one was clearly of better quality. That one he put aside and the next best two with it. The other diamonds he put away.

Next the wood. He selected an old, solid oak tree. Clarence told him several times that they had plenty of good wood from the previous expedition, but Player wanted to be extra sure. If he played this right, this pickaxe could last him for several years. He cut down the tree and then chose a block from the center of it. It was heartwood, strong and inflexible. It was perfect.

Before sundown, Player had a pickaxe that most miners would have died for. He sat in the bunker, listening to Ivy and Clarence squabbling and the zombies and spiders outside and polished it. The handle was still rough, but that wouldn’t last, and he still had to sharpen the edges, but all in all, it was a good piece of work. The blacksmith with the golden plates would have been jealous.

Clarence threw up his hands, play-acting rather than truly irritated, and plonked down beside Player.

Ivy, acting equally as well, swept off into another corner of the room and began to sort through the seeds and roots she had gathered.

Bit held out a palmful of small round seeds, “Beets?” He asked Clarence.

The man made a face, “Ew, no.”

“Not even for your community?”

Clarence shook his head, “If they want beets they can walk out here and get them themselves.”

Player smiled at that. The fear in the valley seemed to be loosening its hold on all of them. Certainly he felt better, and Clarence was in better spirits.

“Why not?” Bit asked.

“Because beets are bitter and gross and they stain everything they touch.”

“Oh boo hoo,”

“I’ll take home strawberries and peaches back, but no beets.”

Player started to laugh but felt a splinter slide into the side of his index finger and winced instead. He removed his hand from the pickaxe and examined it. The splinter was a larger one, and he could see it clearly under his skin.

He squeezed at his finger with his other hand, using his thumbnail to work the sliver of wood loose. It broke through the skin again, and he pulled it out. “Ow,” he muttered, and finally glanced around.

Clarence was watching him through those large dark eyes of his. They looked less like cow eyes now than they did before. They were more human, more solemn and familiar with pain. Player gave the man a smile.

“It will stop doing that in a couple days,” he said.

“Giving you splinters?”

He nodded.

“When it does, are you going back down?” Bit asked.

“I should. I need to have something to show for this trip.”

“You being gone it going to make us more vulnerable to attack.”

“I’ll try to be back before nightfall, and there are no other players out here to mess with you.”

The man nodded, “That’s true. We’ll be fine without you for one day.”

“If I strike it rich I’ll be sure to bring back enough for everyone,” Player grinned. Talking felt good.

“I’m going to bed,” Ivy said from across the room, “when you three are done, turn the lights out.”

Bit shuffled back and forth for a second. He stuffed the beetroot seeds back into his pocket. “I’ll go to sleep too,” he said, “we’ve got to do it all again tomorrow.”

Player nodded and watched him go. Clarence stayed beside him. After a moment they looked at each other. Player looked away first, trying not to blush.

“We should go too,” Clarence said.

Player nodded his assent, finding his tongue would not work. He got up and put out the torches while the others settled down. Then he kicked off his own shoes and crawled into his sleeping bag for the night.

As he settled down, something beneath him dug into his side. He fished it out and looked at it in the moonlight filtering in through the door. It was a small bag of seeds. “Strawberry,” said the label.

Player grinned. He turned his head to look at Clarence, but it looked like the man was already asleep. He was several blocks away. Player put the seeds into his pack and laid down again.

Despite all his attempts to the contrary, he fell asleep thinking about Clarence and feeling vaguely guilty. 

He dreamed he was in a cave, deeper than he had ever been before in his life. The bedrock showed through the floor and walls. It looked as if part of it was below the level of the bedrock. The world was trying to expel this place, but its own fabric was resisting the change. The floor of the cavern was splashed with puddles and the still corpses of mobs. The whole place was lit with the dim glow of a distant fire.

Player had been placed at the entrance to the cavern, a hole partially in the ceiling of the cavern that was too steep to walk back up. He stepped forward, making bones crunch beneath his feet. Above and around him, diamonds sparkled in the walls of the cavern. His eyes fixed on them for a moment, but then slid off as his focus wavered.

He walked further into the room, turning slowly in a circle as he went. More bones crunched under his feet, and something soft squished beneath him. He looked down and saw intestines. He might have been disgusted, but everything felt distance and fuzzy. He was aware that this was a dream. He could still remember falling asleep in the bunker with Clarence, Bit, and Ivy.

Player turned back around as he neared the center of the cavern, and suddenly a wall rose up in front of him. He yelped and took a step backward. It was black and slick, almost slimy.

“Obsidian?” Player said. His voice echoed around the cavern and became magnified by the walls. He turned his head and saw that the thing was rectangular and it seemed to turn away from him at a right angle to both sides.

Something behind him made a small noise. It was soft, like the squeak of a newborn thing, but for some reason, it turned Player’s insides to ice to hear it. He turned slowly, one hand grasping for the handle of his pickaxe but finding nothing but air.

He didn’t even register what it was. He saw only a vaguely humanoid shape and two small points of red light in empty eye sockets. Something sharp slammed into his chest.

And he woke up in the bunker with all three farmers looking down on him.

Player sat up fast and rolled to one side, afraid he might throw up. He gagged and gasped for a moment, and then got a hold of himself. “What the fuck?” he panted.

“Player?” Clarence laid hands on his back.

“Don’t touch me!” Player yelled and regretted it immediately.

The man jerked back, and all three farmers took several steps away from him.

Player gagged again. He was unsure why he was feeling so sick, only that it had something to do with the dream.

“It’s hitting him hard,” Clarence said, “this place just does this.”

“Come on,” Ivy’s voice now, “let’s get him outside.”

She ducked under one of Player’s arms and Bit took the other. They extricated him from his sleeping bag and hauled him outside and let him lean against a tree. The fresh air helped a lot, and soon he was back in control.

Player slid to the ground and leaned his head back against the tree. He felt exhausted and yet he’d only just woken up.

“Feeling better?” Ivy asked.

He nodded a little, watching the leaves on the oak tree dance overhead.

“What happened?”

“A dream,” he said, “just some weird dream.”

“It looked like more than that.”

Player shook his head. He could feel the fear inside him. It was alive. It was squirming. “I don’t know what happened.”

Clarence dropped down beside him and Player flinched away. He was feeling the push and pull sensation he had thought he was free of. He wanted to touch him, but being touched seemed intolerable.

The man took no notice. He took Player’s hands in his own and squeezed them. “Look at me,” he said, and when they made eye contact he continued, “this place does stuff to people, okay? The first time we were out here, everyone had weird dreams. Whatever it was, whatever you saw, just forget you saw it. It’s this valley messing with you.”

Player nodded, but he didn’t believe a word of it. Clarence was just as scared as he was.

“Good,” He gave Player a hug, awkwardly because they were sitting on the ground. Player’s entire body tensed and he fought the urge to push the man away. Unintended, his eyes flicked towards Ivy. She was glaring through slits. Just to spite her, he returned the embrace and a moment later the feeling of warmth returned to him. He relaxed and gratefully shut his eyes.

“Better?” Clarence asked after a few seconds.

Player nodded mutely.

The man pulled back and brushed off his shoulders. He stood, looking a little self-conscious but determined to hide it.

“Guess we aren’t going mining today,” Ivy said, her arms crossed over her chest.

Player shook his head. His heart was pounding at just the thought of going down into the caves.

“Oh well, probably for the better,” Bit stretched over his head, “We can try to get into those fruit trees.”

“Are they apples or something else?”

“I don’t know. Can’t tell.”

They both wandered off.

Player took his weight off the tree and stood up. He still felt shaky and nervous. Clarence was looking at him, still and quiet.

“Are you still planning to go mining?” The man asked.

Player took a deep breath and assessed himself. “Yes,” he said.

“Good.”

“Tomorrow. Or the day after. It will depend.”

There was silence for a moment.

“They’ll get it too,” Clarence said, “it’s just taking them longer.”

“It was so weird,” Player said, “it wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t even a very strange dream.”

“That’s how it is,” Clarence said. “I had a dream about harvesting wheat and woke up trying to scream my lungs up my throat.”

“Why are we here?” He turned to look down at the man, “It’s not because of the crops, is it?”

Clarence looked down. “No,” he said, “it’s not.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Clarence, be honest with me. You owe me that.”

A few moments of silence. “I really don’t know. I just wanted to come back, and now that I’m here I don’t know what to do.”

Player threw up his hands. He walked in a circle, rubbing his eyes with both hands. “I’m sorry. I’m still worked up.”

“It’s okay.”

“We seem safe enough right now. The mobs haven’t been too bad, but--”

“We shouldn’t stay much longer,” the man stood, “I get it. We can go in a few days.”

“No,” Player said, “that’s not what I meant. I want to know what’s happening here. This place calls to people, and I want to know why.”

Clarence looked relieved, “Well, we can stay here for as long as we want. If we’re inside the shelter at night we should be fine.”

“We’ll have to see if Ivy and Bit want to stay too.”

“They will. They’re that kind of people. We just have to ask them.”

“Okay. Let me grab that new pickaxe first,” Player jogged back to the shelter and took it from where he had left it last night. He also took his pack from the wall and put it on his back.

By the time he was back outside, the farmers were already gathered in a little huddle on the edge of the woods. Player approached them

Bit and Ivy looked up at him, alarm clear in their faces. Then they softened as Clarence’s words registered. They both nodded.

“So we’re all agreed?” Player said.

“I guess so,” Bit sounded resigned.

“We want to go back to our communities after two weeks,” Ivy said, “we can come back after that, but we need to have a break.”

Clarence was nodding, “This place will rip us apart if we aren’t careful.”

“Fine by me,” Player said.

Ivy made eye contact, “Still no mining?”

Player shook his head again, more emphatically than before. “Tomorrow,” he said, “after I’ve forgotten a little bit of it.”

But as it turned out they did not go the next day, because Ivy woke up screaming. The night after that it was Bit. They both reported seemingly mundane dreams that disturbed them deeply. Ivy’s was a short thing about buying a cake from the bakery in her village. Bit’s was about wandering through a forest. Player kept quiet about what he had seen. It felt like a great secret, one that he could not share with any of the farmers. Once the fear of the dream had faded, what remained was the feeling of the obsidian under his palm and a feeling of immense power. It reminded him of something dim, a memory faded by months of distance. It made him self conscious.

On the third day after Player’s nightmare, no one woke explosively in the night. He opened his eyes and sat up. He took a moment to stretch and yawn before looking around. Clarence’s place was vacant.

Player took a few seconds to wake himself up and follow the course of events to its reasonable conclusion. He squirmed out of bed and put on his shoes. He took his pickaxe and pack and went outside.

It was early morning and the light was still grayish and indistinct. It threw the trees into shadow and outlined their shapes loosely. The valley in this light looked strange and distorted.

Clarence was sitting on top of the hill the bunker was dug into looking out at the land. His knees were clutched tightly to his chest. Player sat a little way away. He didn’t try to talk. He sat and watched the sun come up over the Eastern rim of the valley until the gray turned pink and orange and the sun threw beams down through the mountains and trees to dapple the floor if the forest.

“I’m okay,” Clarence said finally, “it wasn’t very bad.”

Player still didn’t speak. He sat still and silent and watched the oranges turn blue.

“You can still go mining today,” The man went on, “I’ll survive.”

“I was hoping all three if you would come with me,”

“I don’t know if they’d want to.”

“I can tempt them down with emeralds. That’s easy.”

“I don’t know about me,” Clarence said, “it might be too much after… ”

“That’s okay. We can wait a while more. It’s not like there’s a lot of competition.”

“That’s true.”

There was silence for a few minutes.

“What did you dream about?” Player asked.

“The bunker. Being in there with you and Ivy and Bit, all asleep except me.”

“That’s it?”

Clarence nodded, “I sat there for a little while waiting for you to wake up, and then looked down at the floor. I opened my eyes and I was back in the bunker again.”

“These dreams are bizarre,”

“No shit.”

Player snorted then went still again. The bottom edge of the sun was just showing over the mountains. “Does it feel like there’s something alive here to you?”

“Besides the trees and the plants and stuff?”

“Yes.”

“No. It feels just like anywhere else. Why?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think the ground is breathing.”

“The ground?”

Player rushed to defend himself, “Not literally. I mean I can feel something down there, alive and powerful.”

“Maybe you’re sensing something we don’t.”

“I hope not. I hope it’s just my imagination.”

Clarence let go of his knees and laid back on the grass, “Me too.”

Player watched him for a moment. He got to his feet and stretched. “So no mining today,” he sighed.

“You can go by yourself.”

“I’ll wait.”

“If you’re not careful, you’ll be waiting forever.”

“I’m prepared to do that.” In truth being still for so long was driving him insane, but he could suppress the urge to move for a while longer.

Clarence grinned up at him, “You are fantastic, you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“We drag you around, Ivy and Bit break into your mine and try to steal your resources, Ivy’s partner abuses you in public, and yet somehow you--” He stopped, noticing how Player’s face had darkened. “I guess you’re not so forgiving.”

“I’ve been not thinking about all that stuff on purpose for the last few weeks,” Player said, “don’t remind me now.”

“But you’re still here, so you must have forgiven us on some level.”

“There is no ‘us’ in that situation. There’s you,” he pointed at Clarence,” and there’s them,“ he stamped his foot on the ground where, beneath them, Ivy and Bit slept, “I don’t confuse the two.” He regretted saying it instantly. It wasn’t something that should be said aloud and definitely not to Clarence’s face.

The man sat up again, one knee bent the other straight. Player could see the gears turning in his head as he thought about that. He held his breath and waited.

“I can live with that,” Clarence said finally. “I don’t know what I did to deserve it.” He looked at Player as if asking for an answer.

Player shrugged, “I have no filter in the morning, I guess. Let’s stop talking now.”

“Okay,” he sounded hesitant.

Player turned away and started to walk back down the hill.

“Hey,” Clarence said, “come here for a second.”

He went back, puzzled, and the man pulled him down to the ground. He gave Player a hug.

“It helps with the dreams,” Clarence said, “makes it easier to get over it, did you notice?”

“I did.” He reached up one hand and stroked the man’s hair. It was soft and thick, textured like grass.

“I’ll stop hugging you when Ivy gets up,”

Player opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again with a sigh. He wasn’t ready to say what he wanted to. It was just going to remain up in the air for a while longer.

“And then we can actually go mining,” Clarence continued.

He could feel the tension flowing out of the man’s body. The hug was helping. “If you feel up to it.”

“I will in a little while.”

They sat like that for a few more minutes, Clarence’s head against his shoulder, until there was sound in the hill beneath them. Player pulled back before Clarence did out of instinct and fear. It hurt the man a little, he could tell, but it had not yet gotten through his skull that Clarence was like him on some level, and since he couldn’t remember having a friendship before he met the man, Player just assumed this was how it always went. He had seen plenty of friends that cuddled with each other, often quite openly. He concluded that this was the kind of person Clarence was, and he was right on some level.

What Player did not know was that he was as distracting for Clarence as Clarence was for him, but he didn’t confuse the man in the same way. Clarence had always been aware of who he was. It had never bothered him very much, but his circumstances were different, and he had always been attracted just as much to Spark as to Player.

Ivy came out of the bunker and stretched in the morning light. She turned and looked up at them, “You two okay?”

“We’re fine,” Clarence said back.

She looked right at Player, “Another nightmare?”

“No,” he said, “thank goodness.”

“So then today is the day?” She asked, “We’re going mining?”

“If you want to come.”

“Of course I do. I want to get my hands on some goodies.”

“Do you even have picks?”

“Yes, I do.” She opened her inventory and produced a stone item. It was rather shoddy craftsmanship, but it would do. 

“And Bit?”

“He does too.”

“I guess it’s settled then.” Player stood up and Clarence followed him. “I’ll try to find an entrance around here somewhere.”

“I’ll get Bit up then.” She turned back to the door and went inside.

Player leaned back as he jogged down the steeper side of the hill and made his way towards the forest. Then he remembered something and turned back.

“Are you coming?” He called to Clarence.

Delight lit up the sweet face and the man bounded after him. “What are we looking for?”

“A big hole in the ground.”

“I meant something more specific.”

“No. That’s about it.”

Clarence glanced behind them and then danced around so he was in front.

“You’re feeling better, I see,” Player said.

“I told you, hugging helps.”

“I guess so,” Player wondered to himself how much of the change was an act. He supposed it didn’t matter as long as Clarence held it together.

“Let’s go find a cave,” The man turned and practically skipped away.

Player watched him do it, spellbound for a moment. He shook himself and followed. He couldn’t let Clarence wander around by himself.


	32. The Monster's Lair

“Something is happening to 4979.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. His heartbeat just jumped up nearly 50 beats per minute.”

“Is he running?”

“Must be, or something similar.”

“Well, as long as he doesn’t start seizing we should be fine. He’s done this before.”

“I know.”

* * *

Ivy and Bit joined them almost half an hour later. The valley was, as Clarence had told them, riddled with ravines that seemed to go down almost to the bedrock. Those were easy to find, but they weren’t what Player wanted. Ravines were easy enough for him, but he wasn’t sure how the farmers would handle shimmying down 40 blocks of stone with nothing beneath them but a painful fall. They needed a cave to get them at least partway there.

They had found a sort of cave in the ground. The opening was about five blocks wide at the largest point. It sloped away sharply, the stone around the edges jagged and, on the bottom, stepped down like stairs into the gloom below.

Player stepped down into the entrance with a lit torch so he could see how far it went while Clarence stayed up top and waited for Ivy and Bit to show. The cave went off in two different directions only a few blocks down. One path let straight ahead and was level. The other path dropped off again. Player tossed the torch down it. It went down for about 15 blocks and then the slope became much more gradual.

“They’re on the way!” Clarence called down to him.

Player lit another torch and held it up so that Clarence, peering down, could see him. He gave the thumbs up. He was eager to start the expedition.

A moment later Ivy and Bit appeared looking down at him.

“This is it?” Bit asked.

Player waited. He was quickly running out of patience in the face of what was, for him, immense temptation.

“I guess so,” Ivy took one step down into the cave. She immediately lost her footing on a patch of moisture and slid down the slope, crying out in panic as she went.

Player snagged her as she went by. Her momentum nearly knocked him off balance himself, but he managed to steady himself using his pickaxe. He yanked her close to him to steady them both, and Ivy’s hands landed on his chest for a brief moment before he stepped back. Her hands flexed in the air for a couple seconds and she blushed from her ears all the way down her neck.

“Everything okay?” Bit called down.

“Fine,” Ivy replied.

Player turned away. He spat on the cave floor and descended down the next steep slope. At the bottom, he retrieved the torch that he had thrown down and placed it on the wall.

“Wait for us!” Clarence called down.

“Hurry up.” Player walked forward. There was a narrow shaft of sunlight lancing down into the gloom of the cave. He stepped forward until he was in the light and looked up. There was a perfectly round hole, about five inches across, in the stone above his head. It went all the way up to the surface. The shape of a spider passed over it, blocking the light for a moment.

_ “His foot had gotten caught on the lip of this tiny little rabbit hole and he’d gone flat on his face. Except there was something looking back at me from inside the hole,”  _ Player shivered suddenly. The dread in the valley leaked back up into him from below. For a moment it felt like the earth beneath him was expanding, but when he looked down, the sensation ceased.

Player grabbed a handful of dirt from a block near him and spat into it to make mud. He used this to cover the hole, sticking it in place so that no sunlight could get through. If Clarence saw that, right after the nightmare, he would probably dissolve on the spot. It was just a rabbit hole that went too deep, that was all. There was no need to make them worry.

“Is there something wrong with the ceiling?” Ivy asked him as she appeared over the lip of the drop down.

“No,” Player assured her, “it looks fine. I was just checking something.”

He heard the sounds of Clarence and Bit making their way into the cave and paused to wait for them. Clarence came right to him. He looked almost scared, and he took hold of Player’s elbow as soon as he was in reach.

“You sure you’re okay to go?” Player asked him, “we can wait.”

Clarence’s eyes hardened, “I’m okay. Once we get something from down here we can go back up.”

Player nodded. “You’re going to have to let go of my arm.”

The man released him slowly as if it pained him. He looked as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. He floundered for a moment, then seemed to settle on something.

Clarence glanced back towards Ivy and Bit, who were talking quietly, their pickaxes held awkwardly at their sides. He pulled Player farther away and said, “When we get out of here, I need to talk to you alone. Okay?”

Player frowned, “What about?”

“I’ll tell you later”

He sighed, “Okay. I’ll think up some excuse.”

Clarence reached out and squeezed his arm, “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Ivy and Bit joined them.

“So what do we do?” Bit asked.

“We go down as far as we can,” Player said, “and hope we find something.”

Ivy was looking at the cave around them. “There isn’t much here.”

Player shook his head, “I noticed that the first time I went into a cave here. There are resources, but they’re very valuable and deep underground.”

Bit’s eyes sparked with greed, “Let’s go find them then.” He made to hurry past Player but stopped when the man thrust an arm in front of him.

“Let me go first,” Player said, “if any mobs are down here, I’m the best equipped to handle them.”

All three of them looked hesitant.

“We should have brought a gladiator,” Ivy said.

“Too late now.”

Clarence shivered a little.

“Let’s just focus on getting far enough down so we can find things.” Player handed his torch to the smaller man and lit another for himself off of it. He did the same for Bit and Ivy, remaining silent the whole time. The others picked up on his mood and stopped talking.

Player beckoned them forward into the cave. It was still sloping downward, and from far ahead he could hear running water. The sounds of mobs were noticeably absent. There wasn’t even a zombie moaning in the distance.

“What’s happening?” Bit asked in a stage whisper.

Player flinched at the sudden noise. He turned to glare at the man, “I’m listening.”

The man closed his mouth and kept it that way.

Using first the sound of water and then the distant bubble of lava, Player lead them through a twisting labyrinth of tunnels and dropoffs. Twice more he saw small round holes in the floor or ceiling, but he made sure that no one inspected those areas too closely. He wondered what the purpose of these holes was. Surely the creature could not fit down them; Clarence had described it as too large. But what else could the purpose be?

“I don’t see anything yet,” Ivy pointed out.

Player shook the cobwebs from his head, “The resources here don’t start until we get down almost to the bedrock, but they’re very valuable.”

“Will this cave take us down that far?”

“I think so.” Player reached the edge of another gap and threw his torch down into it. The light bounced off a couple blocks of stone on the way down. For a moment it illuminated the surface of a liquid, and then the flame flickered, hissed, and died as the torch hit the water. 

“That doesn’t look good,” Bit murmured.

Player turned around and crouched down. He levered himself over the lip of the gap and found a foothold. “Wait here,” he said, “it won’t take long to get down.”

“Okay,”

Player checked on Clarence. The man was pale and shaking, but that determination was still in his eyes. He gave Player a shaky grin.

He climbed blind down the sheer stone. At one point he became tired of trying to find holds large enough for his shoes and simply kicked them off. They splashed into the water below

“You okay?” Clarence called down to him.

“Fine.” It was much easier to climb down barefoot, though the stone did dig into him uncomfortably a few times. He picked his way lower for a while, and then his fingers slipped out of a damp groove in the stone and he fell the last three blocks or so and landed in the water with a splash and a yelp. It was deeper than he expected, and his head went under. He surfaced again with a gasp and worked his arms and legs to stay afloat.

“Player?!” A voice called again.

“I’m okay,” he raised a hand to wave even though they couldn’t see him, “this water is deeper than I expected, that’s all.”

“How deep?”

“Let me see.” He took a breath and propelled himself downwards, all the way down to the bottom. He surfaced again, “five blocks, maybe more. Hard to tell.” Something bumped into his arm and Player picked it up. It was one of his shoes. He decided to wait until he was out of the water to put it back on.

“We could jump down,” Bit suggested.

“Let me get some light down here first,” He found his other shoe and held both of them in the same hand, then found the wall with his free hand. He followed it awkwardly until his feet touched bottom and he walked out of the water. Stones rolled under his feet as he made his way out onto the bank.

Player shook himself to remove the excess water and dug in his pack for a torch. It took him several tries with his flint and steel to get a spark, and then the torch flickered sadly to life. He bent and put on his shoes. Water squished out of them and pooled on the stone.

He waded back out into the underground lake and looked back up towards the farmers. The stones in the liquid shifted around and threatened to unbalance him. He waved up to the three faces looking down.

“Is there anything down there?” Bit asked.

Player looked around the small pool of light his torch was making in the darkness. “No,” he said, “just more stone.”

“No mobs?”

“No.”

“Okay then,” Bit said. He gave Ivy a shove with his elbow, “you go first.”

She shoved him back, “No way. You go.”

“I’m not jumping down here without knowing what’s in there.”

Player lost his patience. The water was cold, “One of you hurry up! I’d know if something was down here.”

They looked at each other, and then Bit sighed and stepped forward. He looked down, took a few steps back and took a running start before leaping over the edge, yelling as he went to bolster his courage.

Player shielded the torch from the resulting splash, but the flame guttered and nearly went out anyway.

Bit came up with a gasp and stroked over to where he could stand. “Notch, that’s cold!” he managed as he climbed out, clutching his arms and shivering.

Player steadied the man with a hand on his arm and gave him the torch to hold.

“Next!” He called up.

This time it was Ivy who took the plunge, and she yelled on the way down in panic. She made much less of a splash than Bit, but she floundered for a moment before she managed to swim. Player almost reached out for her, but then he remembered how he had reacted to him and stopped. He clenched his teeth and let her struggle until she was within reach and only then did he take her arm and pull her over to the bank. 

She seemed shaken by the experience and coughed a couple as she staggered past. She shook off Player’s hands as soon as she had her feet under her and joined Bit on the bank. They moved off a little way, using Bits' torch to light a second one for Ivy.

Player looked up expectantly at Clarence. The man looked small and scared. He gave him a smile.

Clarence leaped off the edge. He did it silently, in contrast to Ivy and Bit, and when he hit the water the splash was very small. He sank fast, but then bounced up just as quickly, gasping as he broke the surface. He swam to Player. Even in the dim light of the distant torches, it was obvious his eyes were huge and his skin was pale and clammy. Player waded a little farther in and helped him to the shallower water. Clarence slipped on the stones beneath the water and went staggering forward into him. Instead of backing up, he held on tight.

“Are you scared?” Player asked.

Clarence nodded, “I feel cold.”

“Let’s get a torch. That will help warm you up.” He started to lead him from the water.

The man yelped and slipped on the rocks again, and for the first time Player looked down. His heart sank, and he pushed Clarence out of the water. Ivy came over and gave him a lit torch.

Player peered down into the water. He reached his hand down and grasped at one of things that he had thought were stones. When he pulled it out, his suspicions were confirmed. It was the skull of sheep. Another bone, long and thin, had gotten caught through its eye socket.

Behind him, he heard a gasp.

“Bring that light over here,” he said, splashing back out of the water. Bit brought his torch closer and the light cast more definition onto the bones. Player leaned in closer to it, squinting in the flickering light. There were definitely teeth marks on the bones, deep grooves in the long one and puncture wounds in the skull.

“What did that?” Ivy asked.

“A wolf,” Player said, “that would do it.” It wasn’t a wolf. He knew that. He turned his head to look at Clarence and saw that the man knew just as well as he did what had killed the sheep. He saw the slow determined fire come into Clarence’s eyes and felt a relief that the man wasn’t going to turn into a dead weight.

“How did a wolf’s prey get all the way down here?” Ivy asked.

Player shrugged and threw the skull back into the water. It came to rest among all the other bones that filled the bottom of the pool.

Clarence handed him a torch as Player crawled out of the water. He held the flame close to dispel some of the chill and dry out his clothes.

“Can we build a fire?” Bit asked, “so we can dry out.”

Player and Clarence made eye contact, “No,” they said together.

“We need to keep moving,” Player continued, “mobs are attracted to fire.”

“We need to find resources,” Clarence had his fists bunched at his sides.

Player looked at him in surprise. He had expected Clarence to suggest going back to the surface. “Really?” he asked.

The farmers looked at him.

He turned and looked at the drop they had just come down, “Well, it will be hard to go back that way.”

“We might as well make the best of it,” Clarence said, forcing cheer into his voice.

“Okay,” Player turned and faced back towards the cave. It was still sloping downwards, “let’s go.”

Clarence kept pace with him this time. He seemed happy for the first time since that morning.

“How are you feeling?” Player asked.

“I’m okay.”

“The dream isn’t messing with you?”

“No. I’ve had them before though. I’m more used to them than you.”

Player nodded.

“You got hit the hardest out of us all.”

“I know.”

“So worry about yourself.”

“I am,” Player laughed to himself for a moment before the smile slid off his face as he watched the light from lava grow in the distance. Before them, the cave turned left and dropped away sharply, and there, at last, was lava and with it heat and warmth.

It was another small pool, almost identical to the first he had found here, except that the cave it was in was much larger. It dipped away into gloom in every direction.

Player was passed by Bit and Ivy in their eagerness to get to the warmth. They whooped as they jumped down, all of their fear evaporating as soon as they saw the light.

Clarence stayed by him. He took hold of Player’s arm again. His hand was shaking. Obviously part of his toughness was an act. Player put his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders and squeezed him tight for a moment.

Ivy called from across the room, “I think there are diamonds over here.”

Player stiffened, “Don’t try to mine them! Your pick will just break them!”

He saw her freeze mid-motion and lower her pickaxe self consciously. Clarence giggled at her.

“I’d better go make sure they don’t destroy anything,” Player sighed. He let go of Clarence and went down into the lower part of the cave.

He hurried over to Ivy and took a look at the stone in front of her. “Those are diamonds,” he said, “here, let me get them.” She looked ready to protest, but instead, simply let him be. Player quickly extracted the diamonds and handed them to her, then climbed up into the resulting hole and searched around to make sure that there were no more in the cluster. There weren’t, but there were a few pieces of redstone there that he retrieved and place into a pouch before they dissolved into dust.

“There we go,” he slid back out of the wall, feet-first. Ivy was struggling to hold all of the resources in her arms. Her eyes were wide and greedy as she looked down at the shimmering gems in her hands. Player gave her the pouch of redstone dust. “You can make a real pickaxe now.”

“Wow,” she managed, “I can’t believe this… wow. Thank you!”

“You found them.” Player felt the sharp edge of disgust in his stomach.

Bit returned from the other side of the room, “there’s another entrance over here. It looks like it goes up.”

Clarence finally descended into the room and went to investigate.

“No, really,” Ivy said to Player, “thank you.”

“If you’re that grateful you can give me one of those diamonds.”

Her hold on the stones tightened.

“Exactly.” Player turned away, smiling. He really wished Ivy was a better person so that he could have had at least one of the diamonds. 

“Player!” Clarence yelled suddenly, “Come see this!”

He walked over and looked at the passage that Bit had discovered. It did indeed seem to lead back up towards the surface, and judging by the breeze he felt coming down it, it was a fairly straight shot all the way up.

Clarence wasn’t looking up the passageway. Instead, he was looking at the floor. Player looked down. Something had recently disturbed the dust on the stone floor, something with feet shaped like a human.

Player looked at Bit, “Did you do that?” he asked.

The man shook his head.

Player looked at Clarence, but he also shook his head.

“It’s Herobrine,” Bit said.

A picture of Hero materialized in Player’s head: the man’s feet over the back of the sofa, kicking in the air. He felt a pang of homesickness for the place, but it passed away at once. “Don’t be ridiculous,” He said without thinking, “those feet are way too small to be his.”

They both looked at him in confusion. Ivy came over.

“Really, look,” Player pointed, trying to hide the slip, “they’re almost skeletal.”

“Then what else could it be?”

“A skeleton,” Player suggested, “or a zombie. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Clarence looked concerned, “What makes you so sure?”

Player stood and shrugged, “We’d know if Herobrine were nearby.” He kept going before they could get more suspicious. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything else here for us. We should keep going, head back up.”

“Okay,” Clarence said.

Player took the lead again as they went up. Soon the farmers were panting as fatigue began to claim them. The adrenaline that had sustained them on the way down was drying up. He kept his eyes on the ground, watching the footprints as they made their way up the grade.

The cave was narrow and bent back and forth at regular intervals. It went up and kept going up as far as Player could see.

The footprints turned away sharply to the right. Player followed them with his eyes and torch and then stepped to the side to see where they went. There was a tiny passage, barely wide enough to squeeze through, in the side of the cave. The footprints went to it and then continued inside of it, shuffling and scuffing against the ground where the thing walking had not picked up its feet. He stepped closer to the narrow gap, curiosity getting the better of him.

He felt it then. The air from the gap was cold, so deathly cold it should be freezing to solid ice. The dread seeped up into him for the hundredth time that week, except now it did not move up through his feet. It came from the gap and hit him full in the face. Player took two steps back before he controlled himself and approached again.

“Keep going up,” he told the others, “follow the breeze. I want to look at something.”

Ivy and Bit nodded and kept going, but Clarence stayed.

“Go on,” Player told him, “I’ll be right there.”

“I’ll wait here for you.”

“Suit yourself,” in truth he felt grateful for the support. He edged sideways into the gap, trying to ignore the horrible feeling in his gut as he did so. It wasn’t a very long passageway. It opened out into a small room after only fifteen blocks or so.

When he reached the end of the hallway, Player paused. There was the half-intact skeleton of what appeared to be a pig nearby. It wasn’t a small pig either: it was at least 400 pounds when it was alive. Several ribs and one of its rear legs was missing from the structure. He decided not to step into the room itself.

Instead, he looked left and right around the corners of the hallway. Seeing nothing that frightened him, he directed his attention across the space to the opposite wall.

The thing was resting against the other wall, sprawled out.

Player’s stomach dropped. His insides roiled. He slapped a hand over his mouth to prevent either vomit or a scream, whichever wanted to come first. He was not immediately sure what it was.

It appeared, at first glance, to simply be a mass of shadow, but the closer he looked the more apparent it was that this thing was very solid. It was black, charred, burned. What little skin there was stretched over its frame was taught and dry and cracked clean through at the joints. It was humanoid, but its spine was much too long and its arms too lengthy to be human. And its head… its head was definitely a human head, there was no doubt in Player’s mind. It had hair and ears and probably eyes too, but its jaw was too wide and teeth protruded from its mouth like fangs. It was something that would make the most hardened gladiator turn and run. It was something that could bore the small round holes in the ground with its long thin arms. It was something that could puncture the skull of a sheep using its teeth. It was probably something that could dislocate a man’s shoulder just by grabbing it.

It appeared to be asleep.

Player swallowed hard and started moving back along the hallway. He remained as quiet as he could with his limbs shaking.

When he emerged, Clarence was waiting for him. “What is it?” the man asked.

Player put a finger to his lips and beckoned to him. They moved up the passageway towards the lights of Ivy and Bit that were quickly growing dim.

“What?” Clarence asked again.

“Keep walking,” Player hissed, “and be quiet. We don’t want to wake it up.”

Clarence’s eyes went wide. His hand on the torch tightened, and with his free hand, he took Player’s arm again. He was shaking again, almost vibrating.

They walked on for a little bit in silence. When they were more than a hundred blocks away, Player felt it was safe to speak, “what did you want to talk to me about?” he asked, suddenly convinced that Clarence would not be able to tell him after they left the cave.

Clarence took a breath, “I wanted to tell you that--”

“What’s taking you two so long?!” Ivy’s voice came down the corridor.

Both Player and Clarence froze. They turned and looked back at the narrow corridor. There was nothing for a long moment, and then something in the shadows moved. It was squirming out of the crack in the wall, so tall that is bent almost double in the tunnel.

Player took the torch from Clarence’s hand and extinguished both it and his by closing his hand over the flames. The skin on his palms stung with the heat and he bit down on his cheek to keep from crying out. It plunged them into darkness, but it was better than being seen. He leaned over to the man and whispered, “We’re going to move very slowly and quietly up this cave, and we are going to keep moving until we get to the surface.”

“I’m so scared,” Clarence said, and Player could tell that he had a hand over his mouth. All of his resolve had crumbled, all of the fire had gone out of the man. The determination was still there, he could feel that, but it wasn’t much good in the face of whatever this thing was.

Player could feel his fingertips and toes alive with buzzing. His heart was pounding. He was angry, angry that this thing was here, now, to ruin this, but he knew that trying to fight it was useless. They had to escape quietly.

“I know,” Player said. He found Clarence’s head in the dark and stroked his hair, “I know, but you need to hold on for a little longer. It won’t get you.”

Clarence took his hand and held tightly. Player began to pull him in the direction of the breeze, up towards the surface. The man’s breathing was coming hard.

Ivy’s voice came again, “Hello? Clarence? What’s he doing to you?”

The thing behind them mewled. It was the sound of a young thing, and it sounded way too close to them. Player felt Clarence stiffen beside him.

“Clarence!” Ivy yelled.

Player wanted to scream at her, wanted to tell her to shut the nether up, but he couldn’t. He gritted his teeth and promised himself he would slap her, really honest to Notch slap her, as soon as he was out of this mess.

The thing snuffled, and now Player was sure it was directly behind them. He stopped moving and placed Clarence in front of himself in the pitch blackness, shielding the smaller man with his body. Clarence whimpered, but it was barely audible.

“It’s okay,” Player moved his lips through the words but did not actually say them, “it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

The thing was moving away now. The sounds of it were growing more distant as it shuffled its way back to the cave it had emerged from. Player let out a little sigh of relief; it wasn’t a monster with very good senses.

Clarence was holding tight to him, shaking with silent sobs. Player took his hand and they continued walking, the man’s hands restricting the blood flow to Player’s fingers.

The next turn in the tunnel was in sight. It was not far now. They had a chance.

Ivy and Bit stuck their heads and their burning torches around the corner. “What the nether?” Bit started and then fell silent as his eyes flicked behind them. They grew huge and afraid.

Player risked a glance back. The thing was looking at them. Its eyes were small and red and they seemed to snap onto him like a targeting mechanism. He saw to his horror that in one hand the thing had a stone sword at least twice as large as the usual ones.

“Run,” he told Clarence, “run and don’t stop, follow the breeze.”

The man took off without questioning him. Ivy and Bit both dropped their torches and did the same.

The thing screamed behind them. It was the high pitched wail of a hunter, it was a thousand people burning alive, it was the sound of hell itself.

Player put his head down and ran.


	33. Frustration

From the research notes of Ana Dane, 13 July 2026.

If anything is to be learned from the recent tragedy on our base, it is this: keeping non-humans contained is dangerous. They cannot bear being without purpose, movement, or the means to fulfill their impulses. If one creature that we do not even view as being very powerful can shatter a layer of bulletproof glass five inches thick and proceed to batter down three solid steel doors on its way out of the building, I shudder to think what several creatures working together might be capable of.

Currently, we have three confirmed casualties. All three were members of staff who tried to subdue the creature as it escaped. Those who stood by and did not interfere were not hurt. We were lucky.

If I had my way, we would allow socialization and recreational activities between the monsters. I guess we’ll see if I’m listened to now that people have died.

* * *

Herobrine sat on top of the desk across the room from his bed. His sword, which was in his right hand, was blunted around the tip and cracked off-center. His eyes were narrowed to slits and casting two beams of light at the hole in the far wall where the block of bedrock usually sat. The obsidian showed absolutely no signs that it had just been battered by a diamond sword. It was not scarred, chipped, dented, or cracked. It was not going to break that way.

And now, to top it all off, his sword was essentially useless.

He raised it and looked at the blade. It wouldn’t cut through butter now, not with an edge like that. If he had not been trapped, all it would have taken to repair the blade was a thought. As it was, he didn’t even have a diamond and an anvil.

He stood and stalked back and forth across the room. The remains of his chair were scattered across the floor. He had used the blunted edge of the sword on it not half an hour ago. It was splintered beyond repair and he had not yet bothered to sweep it up. A sharp piece of wood stabbed into his bare left foot and he snarled in rage. He hopped over to the bed and sat, crossing his ankle over his knee. The splinter had driven in deep, and he couldn’t get a good hold on it. He stood again and hopped to the counter, took the little iron knife and sat again. He dug the tip of the blade into the ball of his foot, drawing blood, and levered out the end of the shard. He gripped it between two fingers, dug in with his nails.

He felt a slight pressure building in his ears and reacted. He stopped pulling out the splinter and leaped to the bed where he picked up the block of bedrock and pushed it back into place. Then he sat on the bed and growled in pain. The shard of wood had been pushed even deeper into his foot than before.

He returned to the counter and picked up the knife again just as his ears popped.

Janus appeared in the middle of the carnage from the chair. She was facing away from him and looked around confused for a moment before turning.

Herobrine deliberately dug the tip of the knife into his foot again just as her eyes found him. Again he levered out the shard of wood and again gripped it with his nails. Then he pulled, wincing as it gave up its hold. She looked suitably taken aback.

He examined the three-inch splinter. It did not look like a piece had broken off inside of him, which was lucky. It was coated with his blood.

Herobrine looked back down at his foot. Weak red water was flowing from the puncture wound. The little red strings wrapped around each other, knitting his flesh back together again. As he watched the puncture puckered, pinched, and then was nothing but a scar that lasted for only a second.

“Hand me my shoes,” he said.

Janus, still too surprised to do anything besides comply, found them where he had left them beside the desk and brought them over.

Herobrine put them on and then put his feet on the ground. He took the broom that he had fashioned from its place on the wall and began to sweep up the shards of wood, walking around and around Janus as he did.

“What happened?” She asked.

“I broke the chair,” he bent down to reach under the bed with the broom.

“Can we talk?”

“Of course,” he kept moving so she couldn’t read the despair on his face. He started humming as he worked around the room. He stopped, stood straight, looking at his sword on the bed. “They used to write songs about me, you know.”

Janus stared at the back of his head. After a long moment, she said, “really?”

He nodded and went back to sweeping, still humming the song. The pieces of wood were beginning to pile up.

“How do you know they did?”

“A friend showed them to me. He was so proud of them. He didn’t write a single one, of course, but you would think he did with how he acted.”

“So you have had friends who were players?”

Herobrine paused. He looked up at the ceiling as he considered it. “No,” he said finally, “no, I never did.”

She made no comment. He has mentioned this friend before but never had she suspected that the person mentioned was not human.

“I had rivals and playmates who were players,” Herobrine continued, “it amused them to try to defeat me.”

“And you killed them?”

“No. I caused their avatars to despawn. Thousands of times.”

“And what did they do?”

“They laughed and came right back at me. For them it was fun.”

Janus shook her head as if bothered by a fly. “They weren’t afraid of you?”

“Some were,” he admitted, “most were. It was really only a few who played with me.”

“I see,” she shook her head again. “I’m sorry I think that someone is trying to wake me up.”

A scream echoed down to Herobrine’s sensitive ears. It only just barely made it past the bedrock and obsidian, but it did. It sounded like the monster that was around his cage. He turned his head towards it. Someone was getting attacked.

“Perhaps you should go then,” he said slowly, eyes trained on the ceiling.

“Yes, I will. Thank you for your time.”

His ears popped as she logged out.

Herobrine dropped the broom, removed the bedrock from the wall, and leaned into the hole. He pressed his ear flat against the cold obsidian. The wailing was definitely getting fainter. Whoever was out there, they had better run fast.

He pulled back from the cold stone and looked at it for a second. Then he smashed his fist into it, hoping that by some miracle it would break. It did not. Instead, his knuckles bruised and he cursed.

There was no way out. That was the long and the short of it. He could not escape on his own.

Herobrine felt tears of frustration fill his eyes and he blinked them back. He climbed backward out of the hole and continued sweeping up the remains of the chair. His shoulders were stiff but his hands trembled.

He missed the sun, even the half-light facade of the game. He missed fresh air and the blue of the sky. He missed the sounds of the world outside his prison. Especially, he missed having players to torment and roughhouse with. He missed, on a level he was just now realizing existed, Player. That pathetic excuse for a miner had dug himself a place in Herobrine’s mind, and he missed him. He guessed, in that moment, that he missed Player because in contrast to himself the man was so weak as to be almost childlike. He missed watching Player try to be something he was not and smirking at the man the whole time. He missed the quiet around Player, the way that the man never questioned him. He missed the sappy romance novels that Player had laying around his living quarters. He missed those rooms.

Herobrine made himself stop there. His shoulders were shaking now as well as his hands. He wiped his eyes and took a breath.

“It’s not over quite yet,” he said to himself, “there are other things to try.” He finished sweeping the wooden debris into a pile and took a piece of paper he had nearby. He carefully transferred the splinters into the trashcan over the course of five trips.

When that was done, he took the iron knife from the counter, still stained with his blood, and went over to the hole in the wall. He squirmed into it on his stomach and started working with the tip of the knife at the obsidian. He succeeded in finding an indent, barely large enough to find with the blade, at the edge of the block. He pushed at the crack, digging in the blade hard. When it was dug in, he wiggled it.

The tip of the knife snapped off.

Herobrine snarled in annoyance as he squirmed backward out of the hole. That was his fault, of course. He had been too impatient when he crafted the knife, that was why it was so brittle. He hadn’t held out much hope that it would get through the bedrock anyway.

The monster screamed again, but this time it was much more distant and it sounded almost pained.

“Someone is giving you a run for your money,” Herobrine said aloud. He chuckled to himself, “players are resilient things. Knock them down and they get right back up. Cut off their leg and they sew it back on. Burn down their house and they build a new one made of stone.” He sighed.

He looked around for anything else that he might be able to use to crack open the obsidian barrier. There was the bed with its wooden frame and woolen mattress, the bookshelf, and books bound in leather, the crafting table, furnace, and stone counter. None of that would be of any use. The desk had a few simple gold adornments, but gold was a soft metal and would not cut ice let alone obsidian.

Herobrine wished that the obsidian in the game was like the obsidian in the real world. The stuff there cracked like glass under the slightest impact. Of course, it was also deadly sharp, but he could withstand a few cuts and splinters if it meant escaping this hellhole. 

The monster screamed again.

Herobrine went to the desk and tore a piece of paper out of one of the blank books. He spent several minutes writing and tucked the note into the cover of the special book he was preparing. He left it on the desk, no longer caring if Janus noticed it. It was as complete as it would ever get.

He crossed back to the bed and sat against the wall. He was trying not to submit to the terror of being trapped. His life had suddenly become purposeless, without hope of any movement in a positive direction. He had guessed at this possibility for months, but it was not until his complete failure to break the obsidian barrier that it really dawned on him. He was going to provoke Janus into knocking him out again. Then he could forget that all this had ever happened and just sleep.

Something heavy landed in the cave outside his prison. Herobrine perked up, listening hard. It was definitely something alive.

The monster screamed again.


	34. Going Under

“His heart rate is still elevated, but vital signs are stable. He’s not in any pain.”

“That’s good, but let’s keep an eye on him. If he starts going under while he’s so close to the center we’ll have to act fast.”

“Hey...it’s not visiting day, is it?”

“No, why?”

“We have a visitor.”

“Oh, hello. We’re sorry, visitors aren’t allowed except for specific hours… Well, if you just want to talk… I see. Nice to meet you.”

* * *

Player’s body was moving of its own accord. It did not flag or falter. His breath came in huge filling gasps, and the air ran into his lungs like water and would not come out. The cave was pitch black, but he could tell where the boundaries were by the sounds echoing around him. There were the farmers, all three rather hysterical, and the sounds of their footsteps on the floor, slipping and skittering over gravel and loose stones. Then there was the thing behind them, taking great bounding leaps that Player heard land every second or so. It was not vocalizing anymore, and that scared Player more than its screams had.

A peculiar sort of calm had settled on him. He was terrified and full of adrenaline, but instead of numbing his thoughts this state seemed to be making him more alert. He did not know where they were going besides up, and that seemed to be all that mattered. So far, the passage had not deviated even once.

In front of him, one of the farmers slipped. There was a yelp and a thud, and then a body was rolling back down the slope. Player stooped, seized an arm and hauled them back up. He felt the brush of long hair in the darkness. Ivy.

“Keep going!” He commanded. She stumbled, wincing, but kept running.

They were not going to make it. The thing behind them was not slowing, and there was only so long Player could keep running at this pace, let alone the recently injured Clarence. He could hear the man in front of him. His breath was coming in hard gasps that bordered on sobs.

“Damnit,” he swore and pulled out a torch. He reached out to a wall and struck it like a match. The coal flared into life, light blossomed in the little stone passageway. The way ahead was illuminated just in time for Bit to swerve around an outcropping and avoid falling.

Clarence looked back at Player, but there was no time to acknowledge him. He thrust a hand into his pocket and opened his inventory, trying to focus on running and retrieving his only weapon at the same time. He had been saving his bow and arrows for a special occasion. Player thought this counted.

He swung the quiver over his shoulder and tested the bowstring. It would do. He waited until there was a wide place in the passageway, and then he threw the torch behind them.

The thing chasing them let out a reactionary shriek, and Player spun to face it. It was even closer than he had thought. The light toss he had given the torch had caused the burning object to collide with its skeletal chest. It had stopped the things charge, but unfortunately, this monster did not appear to be flammable.

It advanced towards Player, staring at him with those beady red eyes. It was not running now. It had never before been faced with an enemy that stood its ground. It shuffled forward, the overlarge sword in its hand dragging along the ground and creating a scraping noise that frayed at his concentration.

Player nocked an arrow, drew back, aimed, and fired, all the while walking backward. The shot missed by a hair. The thing was swaying back and forth as it approached and instead of hitting the creature’s head, the arrow ricocheted off the roof and down into the blackness of the cave beyond.

The creature raised a foot and began to step down on the torch, threatening to eliminate the only light source in the cave.

Player aimed again, this time for the creature’s knee of its supporting leg. This shot hit home with a sound like metal on stone and the thing stumbled sideways. Its little beady eyes regarded him with something approaching curiosity. Nothing had ever hurt it before, much less a human. Again he shot, aiming for the same leg, and again he hit. The creature howled in agony and stumbled again against the wall.

Player was satisfied. He had crippled the monster. The farmers had a real chance of escape now.

The thing bent over double, abandoning its two-legged walk, and charged forward at a speed that ate up the distance between them in less than five seconds.

He yelped and quickly drew another arrow, nocked it, and fired. This time he hit the things head, and the shaft of the arrow stuck out through an eye socket, obscuring the red glow within. The creature buckled under its own momentum and fell at Player’s feet. It writhed on the ground, clearly not dead, but he did not wait to see if it would get back up.

Player turned and ran again. Ahead of him, Bit had paused for a moment to light his own torch, and now there was a faint orange glow to guide Player through the rest of the cave. The thing screamed, full of pain and rage.

He saw the farmers slowing to look for him.

“Keep going!” he called out, “it’s not dead!”

All three of them turned and continued upwards.

Player prayed that this cave was not a dead end. Behind him, he could hear the monster getting to its feet. If they had to double back past it there was no hope.

Then sunlight bloomed shot through the darkness. It was the dim weak sunlight of late afternoon, but it was sunlight nonetheless. Bit gave a whoop of joy that Player would have echoed if there had been any breath in his lungs at all. He managed a grin through the panic still in his system.

The farmers stumbled out of the cave entrance and paused, gasping. They were bent double, their whole bodies heaving with the physical exertion. Clarence straightened up first and looked back for Player, who was still climbing out of the cave. He ran forward and helped him over the last hurdle.

Player dropped the bow on the ground and pulled a stack of cobblestone from his inventory. He gave half to Clarence and started barricading the hole in the ground. He could hear the monster distantly. It was mewling in a hungry sort of way, pouting about the meal it had been denied.

They had the hole covered in less than a minute, and Player started adding a second layer of cobblestone. He wished he had obsidian. If anything could stop the monster, it would be obsidian. Something collided with the other side of the cobblestone, but luckily it did not break.

Ivy yelped.

“We should probably keep going,” Player panted. He checked the sky. There was not much time before dark.

“Where are we?” Bit asked.

“I know,” Clarence said, “follow me.” He straightened up with an effort, and Player saw that his eyes were red from crying. He felt a pang of guilt again and resisted the urge to rush forward and give the man a hug. They made eye contact, and the man gave him a shaky smile. Then Clarence turned away and began leading them, still at a jog that had Ivy and Bit laboring to breathe again, through the dense forest.

Player kept glancing at the sun. It was sinking fast towards the mountains. He didn’t like that. He was recalling the story about the spider-riding skeletons and the zombie he had encountered on the first day in the valley. Since then he had never been forced to face a mob head-on, and he did not want to.

They skirted around another hole in the ground that looked relatively new. The grass had grown up the edges of it, but the dirt and stone had not yet been eroded to smoothness. Player glanced at it. It connected to a cave system, but the way it emerged from the ground was unnatural.

Ivy flagged for a moment, almost stopped.

“Keep moving,” he told her, “we can’t stop here. It will still be looking for us.”

That scared them all enough to keep them moving.

In the end, they made it back to the shelter fine. Clarence was the first one through the door, and Ivy, Bit, and Player piled in after him. The bunker was large enough for all of them to collapse on the floor in separate places. They all took a few moments to let their bodies calm down after the stress of running for their lives.

Clarence started laughing out of relief first. Then Bit started giggling, then Ivy. Player stayed silent. He had sat up against the wall by then and was putting away his bow and arrows. He would need to make arrows soon. He only had five left.

“Good thinking with the bow,” Bit said to him finally.

Player closed his inventory and started wiping stone dust off of his hands, “Thanks,” he said, “I was sure we were dead.”

“No kidding. What was that thing?”

He shook his head, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

“It looked sort of like a skeleton,” Bit offered, “from what I saw.”

“Might be. It didn’t die when I shot it in the head, so it was probably something like that.”

“You got a good look at it?”

Player nodded. He did his best not to picture the thing in his head. He cut them off before they asked, “Let’s not talk about that. It was too… weird. It was wrong.”

Clarence sat up and rested beside him. He looked exhausted but happy or at least relieved. “I think,” he said, “that we should go back to civilization and send back a team of twenty gladiators to deal with that.”

Ivy laughed, “Well they won’t be from my village. Those guys will get eaten alive by the mobs out here.”

“Same goes for me,” Bit tossed in. A mischievous glint came into his eyes, “Hey, Player,”

“I don’t think the sentries would be very good for that,” he supplied, thinking of the man who had made him fight the zombies.

“No, no. Have you seen Hero yet? I bet he could take that monster on, don’t you?”

Guilt crushed Player’s stomach. Hero. Who knew where the man was now? Clarence saw the look flash across his face and gave Bit a look that shut him up.

“Let’s think about that later,” the man said. He leaned towards Player for a second, “I still need to talk to you.”

He didn’t want to hear it, not right then, “Tomorrow,” he told Clarence. Or when Ivy and Bit were not around. Whichever came sooner.

It was then that he saw it. It was not a lot of movement. It could have been some dust kicked up by feet. It could have been a zombie on the roof over their heads causing a little debris to fall, except since they had arrived back at the bunker Player had not heard evidence of any mobs outside.

A small area of dirt on the floor was slowly draining away as if sucked from below. The spot was only about a foot away from Player’s feet, only about six inches away from Clarence.

He was so relaxed, so convinced that the danger had passed, that it took him a full minute to make sense of what he was seeing. He watched the hole grow round and smooth and widen slightly and watched the black fingers squirm just below the surface of the ground. Then Player understood.

He looked around at his companions. Clarence was still looking at his face, and Bit and Ivy were still on the floor looking up at the ceiling. They didn’t see it, and there was no time to warn them. There might not be time to get up.

“Player,” Clarence was saying, and his warm hand was on Player’s arm, squeezing gently, “thanks. I think you saved us all.”

_ And now I’m going to do it again _ .

Without a word he seized Clarence and pulled him onto his feet. He didn’t try to go to the door, he just put the smaller man behind him and watched the hole in the ground grow wider. Ivy and Bit both sat up when he moved, and then they saw what was happening too and stood, back against the opposite wall of the shelter.

Player pointed to the door of the shelter, and they all started edging toward it.

The monster mewled beneath them, and he felt Clarence start to shake again. He had to get the man out of here and somewhere safe before he lost his cool completely.

Ivy and Bit bolted for the door, their footsteps loud on the dirt. They made it out just fine, but the monster snarled, and then it was bursting up through the ground, throwing the contents of the bunker to the sides as it scrabbled to get a hold in the enclosed space.

Player turned away to shield his eyes from the debris. The noise of the thing was deafening, and Clarence was trembling against him again. He seemed frozen to the spot.

He spun the man around and pushed him towards the door, still using his own body as a shield. They had only seconds before the monster got its bearings and attacked them.

“Go!” he ordered. Clarence snapped out of his stupor and ran forward. Player half-turned and was just missed by the scything arm of the monster as it lunged after the fleeing man.

Clarence yelped as the monster snatched his right foot out from under him. He screamed in apparent agony, but Player could not see the source of the pain. He felt his face contort in a snarl as he stepped forward.

The monster looked at him, and Player looked back. For a moment, he thought he saw it hesitate. He put his foot on the thing’s arm and pressed the bony limb down into the loose dirt of the floor.

The monster disappeared back down the hole, trying to take Clarence with it. The man was yelling for help now, the hysteria in his voice slurring the words. “Get it off me! Get it off me! Please, for the love of god someone get it off--!”

Player took the pickaxe off his back and raised it over his head. He brought it down on the limb beneath his foot, and there was an answering scream of pain from the monster below his feet. It let go of Clarence and almost unbalanced Player as it withdrew the injured arm back into the hole.

He didn’t spare it a glance. He pulled Clarence back up and pushed him out of the bunker and into the night air.

“Back towards the mountains! Now!” He told the farmers.

Ivy and Bit were already edging away from the bunker, and at his words, they started to turn.

“Wait,” Player called to them. He made Clarence join them, and the other two supported him as it became obvious that the man had a lame leg. “Okay, let’s go. If we can make it to morning we should be fine.” He was pretty sure the monster did not like sunlight.

They turned away and the other two helped Clarence limp away from the bunker as fast as possible. Player stayed for a second, bent double and breathing deeply to regain some energy.

Player did not register the noise of the monster squirming out of the bunker. The sound of his own heartbeat was loud in his ears and his breathing was ragged in his throat. He needed a moment to get his composure back and retrieve the bow from his inventory. He wished that he had a sword, but he had broken it more than two weeks previously and had neglected to craft a new one.

It happened so fast that he did not understand how it had happened at all for a long time. He realized later that the monster had come back out of the ground and crawled partially out of the shelter, just far enough to reach him. One moment he was standing there, trying not to throw up, and the next a cold so intense it was painful was stabbing him in the leg. He was jerked off his feet and hit the ground hard on his stomach. The breath left his lungs in a whoosh and his vision went cloudy. Then he heaved air back into his lungs and screamed as the pain slammed through him. His leg was going numb with it, and it was lancing up his spine like icicles.

Dimly, he saw the farmers had turned, but he knew without question that there would be no help from that quarter. He did not bother screaming for help.

Player twisted around and tried to see what was dragging him backward. One of his legs was caught. The monster had a firm grip on his left leg just below the knee. That leg was already useless. He could not even kick at the thing with it.

Instead, he used his right leg, kicking repeatedly at the arm that was gripping him. It was a bad angle. He couldn’t get any force behind the blows.

He tried to roll over, but pain shot the knee and hip of his trapped leg and he stopped.

He scrabbled at the ground beneath him and succeeded only in tearing the pads of his fingers on the pebbles in the dirt.

Clarence yelled his name and stumbled away from Ivy and Bit. His injured leg collapsed beneath him on the third step and he fell. He would be no good. He was too far away to make it in time.

Player looked up and made eye contact with the other two farmers. Neither of them made any move toward him. He felt hatred ball in his stomach, hot and sharp. He opened his mouth to curse them.

And then the bunker passed above him and the farmers were gone. The sky was gone. The sun was gone. All there was darkness, rough stone, and pain.

Clarence got to his feet slowly. His breath was coming in sobs and his shoulders were shaking. He put weight on his injured leg with a wince, then clenched his teeth and straightened up against it.

Both Ivy and Bit braced themselves. He said very softly, “If either of you try to touch me ever again I’ll cut your hands off.”

“Clary, look,” Bit started, and then trailed off.

“There was nothing we could have done,” Ivy offered.

“And how do you know that? Did you try?”

There was silence.

“Let’s go back home,” Bit said finally.

Clarence spun and screamed, “That was home!”

They both flinched.

“That was the only person who has given a crap about me in a year,” Clarence said more softly, “and he’s gone now.”

“Clary,” Ivy said, “he just wanted to look at you, you know. He was gay.”

“I know he was,” he said.

“He didn’t actually care about you.”

“Then why did he walk for two months to find me, Ivy, when you only had to hike for a day but didn’t bother to show up?”

She flinched, “That’s not the point--”

Clarence suddenly looked drained, “let’s go.” He walked past them, limping a little as he went. His posture betrayed the despair he was feeling.

“What would you have done when he made an advance?” Ivy called after him.

“I would have accepted it,” He fired back.

That shut her up.

He clenched his fists to hold back tears, “You know how I met him in a game, before the reset?”

“Yes,” Bit offered.

“I was watching him,” Clarence brought his hands up in front of them and clasped them together, “he was alone and shy and in pain, and he was cute. I wanted to help him, so I waited until it was just me in a lobby without you guys and he was there, and I went up and said hi. I thought it would help.”

“Well it did,” the man said, trying to make it better.

Clarence laughed, “That wasn’t us!” he sounded almost hysterical again, “That was Hero! All we did was hurt him. We hurt and hurt him over and over. It’s a miracle he wanted to find me at all,” and he sunk to the ground again, real sobs shaking his body. “All we ever did was cause him pain,” he whispered, “oh God, I’m so sorry. He’s dead now. He’s dead and there’s no helping him.”

“He’s not dead,” Ivy said, “he’ll respawn.

Clarence shook his head, “if you die here, you die forever. I felt it happening to me when I was attacked. I wasn’t even that close to death and I felt it. He’s gone.”


	35. A Second Interlude

Dr. Janus Dane awoke to find Mr. Hipler staring down at her. He looked vaguely disapproving. She removed the helmet from her head and sat up on the chair, swung her feet over the edge of the bed.

“We may have a problem,” he said to her.

“What is it?”

“4979 has a visitor.”

“He has visitors all the time. His mother and sisters--”

“This person isn’t a family member. The techs have been talking to him, and they seem to be friendly with him already.

That got her attention. The technicians were not approachable people. It would take a special touch to get them to warm to a stranger.

Something occurred to her. “It’s not visiting day.”

“Exactly.”

Janus stood, “I’ll be right there. Get the techs out of the room.”

The man waiting for her in 4979’s room was in his early 20s. His hair was black and cropped short on one side and left long on the other so that it fell over his brow. The eyebrow above his left eye was studded at three different points. His lip was pierced on the right side with a surprisingly tasteful ring. He looked up at her, and she saw that his hazel were full of confused sadness.

“Hello,” Janus said.

“Hi.” He went back to gazing at the still face inside the chamber.

She waited for a minute and then said, “What’s your name?”

“Adam,” he took a breath and shook himself. When he turned to look at her for the second time. His eyes were now alert and nervous. “Who are you?”

“My name is Dr. Janus Dane.”

“Doctor of what?”

She shifted uncomfortably, “It’s complicated.”

There was something alive in his eyes. Janus, who did calculus in her head, did not sense anything familiar. Adam had a different sort of intelligence than she did. “Suit yourself,” he went back to observing 4979.

The body in the chamber was twitching slightly, causing the fluid around it to slosh back and forth. It looked like the man was having a bad dream.

Adam looked at her again, and Janus realized that she had no idea what to say. “How did you get in here?” she asked.

He shrugged, “I scanned my pass at the door and walked in.”

“And who gave you a pass?”

“A friend sent one to me online.”

If it was one of the technicians she would see to it that they were dismissed immediately. “And who was this friend?”

Adam shrugged. He was wringing his hands in his lap. “I don’t know. Just a guy I met online. We both have a soft spot for old video games. Doom, some of the early Nintendo Stuff, Silent Hill…”

Janus’s eyes widened. A distant bell was ringing in her head.

“He sent me this message,” Adam produced his phone from a pocket and showed her the screen. On it was a brief message: the address of the facility, 4979’s full name, and the words, “go say thank you.”

“That’s...interesting. Why the thank you bit?”

Adam took out his wallet. He pulled out a photograph and handed it over. “These are Nancy and Susan. My twin sisters. They’re five.”

“And?”

“This idiot,” he taps the glass over 4979’s head, “saved their lives. That’s why he’s like this.”

“What did he do?”

“Ran into a burning building,” he sighed, “typical.” Adam wiped his eyes, “He must have been looking for me, and when he walked by the building and saw it was on fire he ran right in. I wasn’t there, and instead, he found my sisters. They were two years old at the time. He carried them out. Then he must have gone back into the building, all this before the firefighters showed up.” He sighed, “I’m not sure what happened. Maybe dad whacked him and knocked him out. That’s probably it because the old man made it out just fine. There’s no justice in this world.”

Janus stayed quiet. It made sense to her that this was 4979’s story. He was a hero, in a sense. “And you didn’t know where he was?” she asked.

Adam shook his head, “His mom swept him off somewhere. She always does that. Religious camps, youth groups, bible studies, private schools. I think she thought it would ‘cure’ him.”

“Cure him?”

“Not literally. He’s not sick, not from my point of view anyway. He’s just… not what she wanted I guess. The poor guy is so far in the closet I doubt he knows he’s in there at all.”

Janus blinked. This was news to her. “4979 is homosexual?”

His face darkened, “maybe I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“No,” she said quickly, “It’s none of my business. The techs might like to know though.”

“They already do. We talked about it a bit earlier.”

“How did they know?”

“‘The way his hormones responded to certain stimuli.’ That’s a direct quote.”

She flashed on Herobrine’s concerned face.  _ “He’s getting better.” _ What had he meant by that? Was he referring to the fact that Player was gay or was it something else? “Did he ever show any signs of sickness?” she probed.

“I’m pretty sure he was some kind of depressed,” Adam said, “having no friends will do that to a person. He got better when he started hanging around with me, but deep down I think we made it worse for him at home. And eventually, his mom found out and… there was a reason he was looking for me at my house and not at school.”

Janus had just one more question, but she really hated to ask it. “Did you two have a relationship?”

Adam smirked at her, “My girlfriend would just love that, but no. I’m straight, I just have empathy. I’m surprised by how much people confuse those two things.”

She dropped that line of questioning and went back to the original one, “So your friend told you where he was and you came here to find him.”

“Yes, he did. He does stuff like that, he always seems to know what’s going to happen before it does.” His phone sparked and buzzed, and Adam dropped it with a yelp.

Janus raised a foot to stomp on it like it was a huge spider, but the phone skittered sideways of its own accord. It crackled and snapped, sparks flying from it like it was alive. Something squirmed from it, and she knew without a doubt that this  _ was _ alive. It emerged from the screen, long sagging limbs dragging it forth until it resembled some huge insect, and then it was gone like a shot across the floor. It scrambled up the wall and disappeared into one of the screens.

The screens in the room jumped to life, all of the complicated medical information that the technicians usually spared the visitors in plain view. Adam’s eyes locked onto one of the displays and he leaned forward over the glass pod. This seemed to concern him much more than whatever had just crawled out of his phone.

“What the hell is that?” he asked no one, his eyes narrowing.

Janus was watching another screen. The white text of the system she was used to seeing was on it, filling up the screen. For the first time, the text wasn’t monotone and informative.

“One virus detected, treating. 

“Treatment failed. 

“No viruses detected. 

“I can feel him. He’s climbing up inside me. He’s ripping me apart. He’s going to take over. The code is being rewritten.”

The text color changed to an acid green, and the plain white text of the system began to change before her eyes. “Don’t be afraid, Janus,” the speakers in the walls shushed her with static interference. The door slid open gently to admit the two technicians as they rushed in, looking down at their computers that monitored 4979’s vitals.

“What are you?” Janus asked.

The technicians were pulling hidden keyboards from the area around the container, completely ignoring Adam’s presence. The young man was still watching the screen, his eyes getting wider and wider as the reading changed.

“My name is Ben,” the thing in the computer told her. Shivers ran up her back and clawed at her hair. She swallowed hard. She had not asked for this. “I am here to help you. Act quickly, but do not use the paddles on 4979. You may cause damage.”

One of the technicians reached for the latch on the bubble.

Janus pointed at him, “Don’t,” she said. He stopped moving.

“We have to do something,” the other tech said.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Several alarms began going off. Action exploded in the little room. The body in the tank spasmed its back-arching, its legs thrashing. Its arms jerked like they were on puppet strings.

“He’s seizing!” Adam yelled a professional authority came over him, “we need to get him out of there. He could hurt himself.”

One of the techs jumped into action, opening the pod. Some of the semi-congealed liquid within slopped out onto the floor as the body flailed.

The other tech was still on the wall, frantically tapping a keyboard. “His heartbeat is up, but there’s no palpitations yet. We have time. Blood pressure is elevated. The EEG shows no signs of the seizure. It could just be muscle spasms. Leave him in the pod, you idiot or we’ll lose all of the data!”

Adam turned his head to look at the man but did not remove his arms from the solution. The other tech hauled him back. “You’ll sacrifice him for the data?!” he yelled. 

That earned him a sharp slap and a few low words. “If we have no data we won’t know what’s wrong with him or what to do about it.”

“Are you doing this?” Janus asked the screen.

“No,” Ben told her, “Try to relax. Things are already in motion. He will come to no harm.” 

She didn’t believe it. Another young man was going to die in front of her, and she was powerless to stop it.


	36. Out with a Bang

“Bring in the cart in case we need it!”

“No, don’t use the defibrillator.”

“But ma’am, we have to keep him alive.”

“Hitting him with that will not help. Just… just trust me.”

“If our-- if 4979 dies, I’m holding you responsible,”

“As you are entitled to if this turns out poorly. Keep Adam away from him. We cannot risk the recording of this.”

* * *

Player did his best to protect his head as he was dragged down into the cave system. He covered his face with his upper arms and crossed his hands over the back of his neck. This last part protected him mostly from the diamond pickaxe that was still on his back. It jammed against his arms more than once on the way down. Within minutes his arms were rubbed raw by the stone, and his stomach and chest, exposed after his shift had hiked up, were scraped and battered and leaving a bloody trail behind him.

All this was nothing compared to the agony shooting up through his leg. Pain should be hot, he thought, but this pain was cold. It was so cold that he could not feel his foot, but still, it was painful. It felt like needles were jammed deep into his lower leg and were being moved around. He could not focus on anything else.

He did not know how deep they went, only that the journey to get there lasted a lifetime. The monster had its sword again, and the thing dragged on the ground beside him, making the stone shriek. He watched it for a while, and then his eyes slid shut and the world became nothing out pain and darkness and that sound.

Then the pain stopped.

Player’s leg flopped back onto the ground as the monster dropped him. He heaved in a breath that felt like it would split him in half and then sighed in relief. In comparison to the pain that had just been alleviated, all his other injuries were just mild stinging. His leg was still throbbing, and he couldn’t feel his foot at all, but he would take this reprieve.

The monster was moving around the cave. It seemed to be roughly circular in shape and fairly large. Perhaps it was the entrance to an abandoned mineshaft.

The creature approached him. The sword was still shrieking across the ground, allowing him to track it. Fear tightened around his chest, and Player stopped breathing. He held his breath and tried his best to play dead. If that thing touched him again, he knew he wouldn’t survive it. Something dark was in the back of his mind, a place that swirled and waited in blackness. It was that little piece of him that knew he was mortal, which had been still for nearly three years now, screaming at him for the first time. If he died here, he was going to die for real.

It shuffled over and snuffled at him. It mewled again, hungry. Player hoped that it preferred dead meat over the living sort.

It went away again a moment later, and he breathed again as quietly as he could. He had to do something quickly. One more attack and he was done for.

Player raised his head again and looked around. It was nearly pitch black, but as his eyes adjusted to the dimness in the cave he began to notice that there was a little light. It was barely bright enough to show the edges of the stone blocks in the cavern, but it seemed to be golden in hue. It was coming from the floor in the center of the cave.

Player heaved himself up onto hands and knees. Sharp pinches of pain slid up his bloody arms from his fingers. His shirt was damp with blood and his stomach and chest had almost no skin left on them. Those were only discomforts. A snack and a rest would take care of that, though he would be sore for a week. He could deal with that later. He needed to get away from the monster.

It had shuffled out of the room for the moment, but he could still hear it nearby. It was mewling again, the sound sending shivers down his back.

Player tried to stand up, but his left leg shot hot searing pain up into his body, and he fell again. He bit down hard on his own lip so he wouldn’t scream and tasted blood. When he opened his mouth, red saliva dripped out. He remembered Clarence, laid low by the monster touching him. His own shoulder wasn’t dislocated, but what was the difference? If anything, Player was going to be worse off.

He hoped that Clarence made it out of the valley safely. He hoped that Ivy and Bit made sure he was okay. They hated him, but if they took care of Clarence he might soften his opinion of them.

“I can do this,” he said to himself, “I have to do this.”

The monster growled a little louder in the next room over. Player covered his mouth with a hand and made himself swallow the blood in it.

He started crawling in the direction of the light on hands and knees. The diamond pickaxe was askew on his back and restricted the movement of his right arm and leg but he did not pause to fix it. The source of the dim glow was about fifteen blocks away and Player’s progress was good considering his condition.

The sounds of the monster began to grow in volume again. The hungry mewling seemed more intense. Player felt panic start to grip him. He shuffled forward as fast as he could. The light was his only hope. He would take death by lava over whatever that thing would do to him.

He reached the source of the dim golden glow. It was a hole in the ground about five blocks across. It was smooth all the way around with a nearly vertical slope. If anything fell down there, there would be no coming back up. Player looked into it. The light was definitely coming from somewhere below.

The monster screamed behind him. Player glanced back. It was back in the cave. It was staring at him. He rolled onto his back and stretched his injured leg out in front of him. The pain in his arms and chest was growing worse, and in response to the monster’s presence, his leg throbbed again. Feeling was starting to return to his foot and it too was throbbing and tingling.

The monster took a step forward and Player scooted back. His hand found nothing but empty space.

The thing screamed again and charged forward, intent on catching him.

Player scooted back again, remembered too late what exactly was behind him, wobbled on the edge of the hole, overbalanced, and fell. He did not cry out, only gasped. The monster’s open hand closed less than a foot away from his injured foot as he disappeared over the edge.

He tumbled and rolled down the nearly vertical slope of stone, curling himself into a ball as best he could. He left several smears of blood on the rocks as he rolled down.

The chute dropped and kept dropping. At least fifty blocks down, deeper than it should have been able to go. It weaved back and forth slightly, throwing Player from side to side and providing him with several more bruises. When the chute ended, it did not slowly level out. It simply shot Player out of the end and rolled him out into the open space beyond.

It took him several seconds to get air back, and his first breath was a sob of pain. High above him, the monster screamed again. A few pebbles fell down the chute behind him as it knocked them over the edge. He did not have long before it followed him down. It would be able to climb back up the passageway and carry his corpse with it if it didn’t eat him right where he was.

Player sat up and looked around.

The cavern he was in was huge. It was down at the level of the bedrock, and he could see some of the dark stone in the walls. The floor was completely made out of the stuff, but part of it was sunken down anyway. It was like the world was trying to spit this place out but hadn’t quite managed it yet.

Player blinked. Hadn’t he seen all this before? He looked up. Diamonds sparkled down at him from the walls and ceiling. Far far above, he could see little points of gold that shimmered like stars. These were what were casting the light, and the entire cavern was well illuminated. He could clearly make out the bodies of mobs that had either stumbled down here or spawned in this place and then died by each other’s hands. They should have turned to black snow and gone, of course, but Player knew that they had died here and so there was no respawning for them. They were gone forever. That little voice of mortality in the back of his head was still talking to him, telling him to find a way to survive.

He remembered where he had seen this place before. It was the dream. He had seen this place in his dream. He knew what was in here.

Player got to his hands and knees again. All kinds of new aches made themselves known as he did so. His leg was still the worst one, but it was much better than it had been. He stood, and this time the limb held his weight.

Obsidian. He needed obsidian. He could build himself a little bunker and rest a while. There was obsidian in the center of the cavern, he remembered that. He didn’t have long before the monster followed him down. He needed--Player closed his eyes and visualized the smallest shelter he could--ten pieces of obsidian. He removed the diamond pickaxe from his back and held it at the ready.

He limped as fast as he could towards the center of the cavern, and almost immediately tripped over the disemboweled corpse of a zombie. He gasped as he fell and his pick clattered against the ground.

Some way away from him, through a layer of obsidian and bedrock, Herobrine turned his head at the noise. He crossed the room and put his ear to the wall. Faintly he could hear the sound of ragged breathing coming in gasps. The maker of the sound was in great pain, that was obvious. The sounds were human. It was a player out there.

His white eyes widened and mad hope started pounding through him. There was a player down here. Then the scream of the creature reached his ears and Herobrine understood the situation. That player was going to die if they didn’t act fast.

“I hope you’re a smart one,” Herobrine murmured, “you’ve only got one chance.”

Player struggled to his feet again and continued onwards. He grabbed his pick off the ground and clasped it tight. If any of these mobs were alive he would need it, but none of them were. He stumbled to the center of the room, and there suddenly, as it had in the dream, the wall of obsidian rose up in front of him. It loomed, and Player took a couple of steps back out of surprise. The purple-black color of it camouflaged the structure against the surrounding gloom.

This place was as good as any. Player raised the pickaxe and began chopping away at the block of obsidian directly in front of him. As he did so, a little sound began tickling at his ears. Player assumed it was the mewling of the monster again and only worked faster. The block popped out of the wall and down into storable size. Player jumped back, anticipating lava, but behind the obsidian was a block of bedrock.

Behind the wall, Herobrine was shouting, “No! Not there!” Of course, this was fine. He could escape now, but it would take him at least a month to remove that piece of bedrock, maybe longer. He did not want to wait that long. He pounded on the wall with balled fists.

Player paused, listening. That little noise continued, only now he could tell that it wasn’t the monster’s mewling. No, it was a voice saying words, and it wasn’t coming from behind and above him. The voice was coming from the other side of the bedrock. And there was pounding with it, like someone was hitting the wall.

“Not there!” came the faint sound again.

“Hello?” Player tried, and heard how rough and quiet his voice was.

The pounding on the other side of the block stopped. There was a moment of silence.

Herobrine was trying to keep his voice under control. This player had a diamond pickaxe. This player was smart enough to go for the obsidian. Now if only he could convince them to mine the specific block.

“Hello?” the player said again, confused.

He took a breath and spoke as loudly as he could so they could hear him through the rock. “Don’t mine there,” he said, “go around to the other side.”

Player’s brow creased. He was exhausted and in pain and his leg was threatening to give out beneath him every second, but still, he thought he recognized the voice. It was deep and smooth even though the barrier between them robbed it of some of its power. It made him want to curl up and take a nap. It made him feel safe.

The monster screamed above him, and he remembered the situation he was in. Player looked back up at the hole. A lot of debris was falling now. It must be coming down.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the bedrock, “but I need to make myself somewhere safe.”

Frustration tinged the words that came back at him, “I’m trying to help you. Go around to the other side. It will give you time.”

Player hesitated a long moment, and then he obeyed. He kept one hand on the wall to steady himself. Halfway around the structure, something occurred to him and he almost turned back. He only needed two blocks of obsidian. He could build himself a barrier with the bedrock at his back.

“What’s taking so long?!” The voice yelled through the barrier, and he started. Of course, it would not hurt him to make the shelter on one side of the obsidian cube or the other, so he continued on.

Herobrine tracked the movement around the room. His heart was beating so fast he thought it might crack his ribs. This was going to work. He couldn’t believe it. He was practically jumping for joy.

The player on the other side of the wall fell and cried out as he did. Herobrine suddenly recognized the voice. He rolled his eyes, though no one could tell even if they could see him. “Maybe you have more backbone than I thought,” he laughed.

“What?” Player said.

“Hurry,” Herobrine could hear the monster. It was sliding down the tunnel down here. There was not much time. If the monster got down here before he was free, Player would die.

Player hopped around the last corner. As he went he saw movement by the entrance. Something huge and dark was sliding down the tunnel. The monster was using its claws and sword to slow its descent. He ducked around the corner of the obsidian before it appeared.

Herobrine heard the monster land in the cavern. He heard Player’s breathing change again. The man was freezing up.

He grabbed the strip of fabric that was still behind the bedrock block and pulled it out. He heaved it up and threw it down on the floor, not bothering to choose a particular spot. He leaned into the hole and knocked on the obsidian.

“Can you hear me?” he asked through the wall.

Player, on the other side, whispered, “it’s in the room.”

“I know.”

“If it touches me again I’ll die,”

Herobrine narrowed his eyes. That thing had already hurt Player? “It’s this block,” he said, knocking on it again, “all you have to do is break this block. Do you understand?”

Player knocked on the block but didn’t reply other than that.

The monster was just around the corner now. He could hear it mewling and shambling around. The sword was scraping against the stone. Fear gripped him again, and unlike before this fear did not make him more alert. This was numbing fear. The edges of his vision were starting to go black.

The voice from behind the obsidian came again, “I can beat it. All you have to do is break this block.”

Player shook his head a little. If he moved, it would hear him. He should have stayed where he had been in the first place and gotten another block. He should have barricaded himself in.

“It’s okay,” the voice told him, “it will only take a few seconds, and then I’ll be able to help you.”

Player’s grip on the pickaxe tightened.

The person on the other side of the wall lost their patience, “Break the obsidian now, Player!”

That snapped him out of it.

Player spun and brought the pickaxe down onto the obsidian. It made the usual sound, and the mewling of the monster stopped at once. He could feel its focus shifting to him.

He worked furiously for several long seconds. He heard it start to move, heard it bounding towards him. He tried not to think about the pain he was about to be in.

The block of obsidian broke and warm torchlight flooded out of it.

Player spun to face the oncoming monster. He stumbled backwards as it came around the corner, and kept going as it lunged with the sword.

He might have escaped if it had been a normal sword on a normal arm. Almost certainly he would have gotten away with nothing more than a slight scratch. But this arm was abnormally long and the sword was twice the regular size.

Cold pain bloomed in his stomach as the stone sword bit into his skin and stuck there. It sliced a neat line into him, penetrated the muscle, slid its way in among his guts. Player’s eyes widened and he screamed, shredding his throat with the volume. The monster seemed to be grinning at him.

A blue blur hit the thing in the side and the sword left Player’s stomach with a slurping sound that nearly made him throw up. The monster went tumbling with the force of the blow, screaming as it went.

Player watched in astonishment, his hands attempting to hold his own blood inside of him, as the figure of a man straightened up. He had come out of the gap left by the block of obsidian so fast it looked like he had launched himself from a cannon, but Player had seen his foot braced against the edge of the block below for a second as he squirmed out. That had provided the momentum for the stunning blow.

He looked just how Player remembered except that his hair was a little ragged and his skin had lost the healthy glow. The time since the reset had not been kind to him.

Hero didn’t so much as glance at him. His gaze was fixed on the monster with Player’s blood on its weapon. He seemed to be frowning.

“What are you?” the man asked the monster.

It screamed at him, but it was backing away.

“Some kind of wither?” Hero walked forward. Player saw that the sword in his hand was dull and broken, but as he watched it began to glimmer and sharpen until it fairly glowed with enchantments. “You look like a wither skeleton.”

It screamed again and overcame its instinctive fear. It rushed forward, raising its sword.

Player looked away. He didn’t want to see Hero struck down, not like this.

There was a clang, and he looked back up. Hero had his sword up over his head. The creature’s stone sword had chipped and cracked with the force of its blow, but the diamond weapon was holding strong. The man’s arm was not even shaking.

“Yes,” Hero said, “a mutated wither skeleton.”

The creature whimpered.

And Hero moved. Player had dreamed once or twice about the splendid blur of motion of Hero fighting, but he realized now that what he had seen was nothing compared to what the man was actually capable of.

Hero moved from beneath the sword and in close to it. He brought up his own sword but did not go for the killing blow. Instead, he let the diamond blade bite into its side shallowly. The creature screamed, but this time it was a sound of pain and fear.

Hero started laughing. He sounded happy.

He blurred to the side, as the animal tried to hit him back. He ducked, then jumped, and kicked it in the head. It stumbled but did not fall. The man only laughed again, at the thrill of motion, at being able to really move his body for the first time in months, at being free.

Player stopped watching. He would have rather watched the fight play out, but his vision was starting to blur at the edges. The feeling was leaving his left foot again, but this time it was going from all his other extremities as well. The pain was fading to nothing. He felt cold all over. Not even the blood flowing from his stomach, so dark it was almost black, was warm.

This is what it’s like to die, he realized. You didn’t go out with a bang. You leaked out your life onto the uncaring stone and then you went to sleep. Simple as that. His eyes were starting to feel very heavy. Surely it would not hurt to close them just for a moment. Besides, Hero was here now. Everything would be okay now that Herobrine… was… free… 

What had he done?

Something heavy landed, and there was the sound of mewling. The battle was over. Something had been killed.

The monster paced over to Player and stood in front of him. He could just barely make out the legs. The rough blue denim, the brown shoes that seemed to be somewhere between sneakers and moccasins. Even that was growing hazy.

The monster crouched down in front of him and Player closed his eyes against the white glow. He whimpered. What was he going to do to him?

“It’s okay,” Hero said, and his voice was almost gentle. He reached down and pulled Player’s hands away from his stomach. He pulled up his shirt and glanced at the cut before Player’s hands were back over it, keeping pressure on the wound.

The man sighed. He had seen the other injuries on the man’s torso and arms.

Player curled in on himself. He was starting to lose consciousness. This was it; he was going to die.

Something tinkled. The sound of glass on glass made him focus his blurry sight on the man in front of him. Hero had two bottles in his hand, each one full of pinkish liquid. One seemed to be a brighter color than the other, but it was hard to tell.

Player tried to scoot away as Hero reached out to him, but he did not have enough strength left to escape.

The man stood and moved around him. He crouched again at Player’s side and put a hand on his back. He put his other hand on his knees and forced him to uncurl. It wasn’t very hard.

“Please,” Player reached out to him, “I don’t want to die.”

“It’s okay,” Hero muttered, “it’s okay. I’m trying to help you.”

Player started to double over as pain shook him, but Hero stopped him with a firm hand. When the fit had passed, he reached over and took one of the bottles.

“This will sting,” he told Player, and upended it over his stomach.

Player screamed again. It felt like someone was digging into the wound with their fingernails.

Hero looked away and closed his eyes. He took a breath. When he looked back he had his teeth clenched. “Your life for my freedom, human. That’s a fair trade isn’t it?”

The scream died down to a whimper. The digging pain turned to slight stinging, and Player felt feeling return to his hands and feet. His vision sharpened, though it did not completely clear, and he blinked up at the man’s face above him. This time the familiarity of it made him smile a little. He reached out a bloody hand again and Hero flinched away from him. His eyes brightened and he sneered. Then he softened and took the reaching hand in his own. His palm was warm and rough and Player squeezed it to make sure what he was seeing was real.

The man before Herobrine now did not resemble the Player that he remembered. This creature was much tougher, and even in this state, he had fire in his eyes. The old Player would not have ever come to this place alone or with a group. He was not brave enough. Surely he had not misjudged the man that badly, had he?

“I found you,” Player said, and he smiled with blood-stained teeth, “thank God I found you.”

Hero dropped his hand fast. A reaction had started up in the pit of his stomach, and he did not want to feel it right now. He reached for the second bottle and brought it up. Player didn’t seem to see it.

“I have to ask you--” he stopped talking as the mouth of the bottle was placed to his lips. The liquid within smelled of brimstone, and he tried to turn his head away, but the hand on his back slid up and held his head still.

“Drink,” Hero ordered him.

Player took a mouthful of the liquid. It tasted how it smelled and he tried to spit it out. Hero reacted fast. He had his jaw immobilized in a moment and Player swallowed hard instead. He coughed.

“I know it tastes bad, but you have to drink it. It will help you.”

Player looked up into the familiar face and saw concern there. He obediently drank the rest of the bottle, shuddering with each swallow. When it was all gone, Hero tossed the bottle over his shoulder and it smashed on the stone.

“You’re lucky,” He informed Player, “I made up my mind to show my gratitude to whoever released me. If I had not, you would be dead.”

Warmth began seeping back into Player’s hands and feet. The black edges around his vision started retreating. The pain returned too, but it was distant and dull. He felt suddenly very tired.

He reached out towards Hero again, open-handed. It didn’t register that his fingers were bloody until he touched the man’s cheek and then pulled back fast as the contact left red smears. “Hero,” he said, his voice shaky and slow.

“My name is Herobrine,” the monster corrected him.

“Yes. I know that,” he said. He frowned. There was something important that he was meant to be doing, but he couldn’t remember what it was. The whole world had gone warm and fuzzy around him.

“Just rest now,” Herobrine’s voice told him. Then his eyes flared brighter, and he said in a voice that harmonized with itself, “Sleep.”

Player’s eyes rolled back in his head and he stopped shaking. His chest stopped moving rapidly and fell into the slow rhythm of deep dreamless slumber.

It was for the better. It would spare him the pain of healing, and it was not for long anyway. That kind of trick would only last a few minutes, a half-hour at most.

Herobrine looked down at the sleeping man. Player’s brow was furrowed, and his mouth was a grimace, but this was how the man always looked when he slept. He reached up and touched his own cheek, the smear of blood Player had left there when he touched it. He looked down at the hand that had left the mark and his own brow creased.

What had happened to Player?

Herobrine shook himself. He did not care what had happened. It was none of his concern.

He set the sleeping form aside, just out of the pool of blood, and got to his feet. He took several steps away and retrieved his sword from the corpse of the wither thing. He put it on his back and went back to the entrance of the cave. He could teleport out of course. That was easy. He could go anywhere he liked as long as he had seen the place before, and he could see the top of the chute.

But then Player would be stuck down here, and that was not a fate he would wish on anyone, much less the man who had released him from the prison.

Herobrine glanced back over his shoulder at the man lying on the ground. He cursed to himself briefly, then walked back and kneeled again. He cradled Player’s head with one arm while he checked on the wound. It was already almost closed. The potion of regeneration was doing its work well. He would be healed very soon. He dropped the man again, then thought of something. He squirmed back into the prison he had just vacated and retrieved the book from his desk. He went back out and placed the book on Player’s chest, wrapped one of the man’s hands around it. There, his job was done. He would accompany and guide Player through the book.

He stood again and went back to the shoot leading down into the cavern. He held out a hand and placed it against the first stone block. He narrowed his eyes, focused, and pulled back a little. The block slid out of the wall smoothly, and he did the same with the next block up and then the next, making a staircase.

Herobrine smiled a little. It felt good to have his powers again: the nearly unlimited inventory, the teleportation, the commands, the ability to manipulate the blocks in the game. He glanced back at the man on the floor, his fingers wrapped around the thin volume, and smiled. Then he climbed up and out of the cavern that had been his prison for so long.

If he felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Player laying there, he squashed it. He was looking forward to seeing the sun too much to dwell on negative emotions.

And he was going to enjoy dismantling whatever the players had managed to build while he had been locked away.


	37. New Administration

Everyone in 4979’s room watched in silence as his body in the pod stilled, relaxed, and fell into what appeared to be a deep sleep.

The technicians checked the screens again and again. Finally, one of them stepped over to the body and took its pulse by hand.

“He’s alive,” he said, “and he seems to be fine.”  
Adam sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief. He put his head in his still slick hands.

“That was odd,” the other tech said, “you remember 4980? They gave him a bad medication and he struggled for an hour before he died.”

“Must have been something in the game,” he pulled out a thermometer and slid it into 4979’s ear, “nothing is wrong with this body.”

“Let me check.” Quick hands flashed on a keyboard, “Well that’s a new graphic, but I won’t complain. Here we go. Looks like he’s had a rough go.”

“That’s not new for him.”

“No. He does seem to be healing abnormally quickly.”

“Interesting.”

Janus remembered Herobrine then. “Oh no,” she said and dashed out of the room.

The room was right next door to 4979, and she was there in less than ten seconds. In that time, the door closed and locked, sealing her out of the space. Janus fumbled out her passkey, which she had never used before now, and scanned it. The seal around the lock flashed red. She tried twice more before admitting defeat. She slammed her palm against the glass in irritation.

There was a small screen beside the door, and now it came to life. On a screen that should only have been able to display information about the patient in the room, the acid green text appeared.

“You are not to enter this room.”

“Why not?” She snapped at it, and even though there were no microphones in the vicinity, the text replied.

“You will upset the careful balance that has been put in place. I cannot have you interfering with events from here on out.”

“I have to check on Herobrine,” she said, “I left him abruptly.”

“Herobrine is no longer in his cell.”

“What?”

“He is free.”

“What?!”

“So, you see, going in there is a waste of your time.”

Janus gasped. She remained rigid. “He’ll kill them,” she said, “he’ll kill them all.” She couldn’t believe this was happening. The whole world was spinning out of control.

“Not so,” Ben wrote out on the screen.

“He’s already killed one. He almost killed 4979 right then.”

“He will not seek to hurt any more of your subjects,”

“How can you promise that?” she asked, panic tightening her words.

“Follow me,” Ben said. The screen changed to display an arrow pointing to the right, away from 4979’s room.

Janus stood for several seconds, torn. Then she turned and followed the arrow.

Each doorway she passed had the same arrow pointed right, though after two minutes the computer seemed to become bored of the simple green icon and began embellishing it with multiple colors and animations.

Janus drew the line when one of the arrows was growing and shrinking continuously and flashing all the colors of the rainbow. She stopped and turned to face the screen, drawing odd looks from the technicians in the room beside it.

“Where are you taking me?” She asked the screen.

The animation vanished, “Nowhere.”

She turned around, trying to act stern instead of amused.

“I’m letting you think.”

“Why?”

“Aren’t you feeling calmer now?”

Janus blinked. She was calmer. Her hands weren’t even trembling now.

“Now you can process what I want to tell you,” Ben told her, “back to the room from before.”

Janus turned back around and walked more slowly back to the room beside 4979’s. This time the door slid open for her. She hurried to the helmet still waiting for her on the chair. The cable that connected it to the bank of computers was completely severed and smoking slightly.

Mr. Hipler walked in behind her. He was almost cut off, the door closed so fast. He leaped into speech right away, oblivious.

“The system just purged itself,” he said, “it’s not supposed to do that. I know the AI is state of the art, but it seems to be overstepping its programming.”

“That would be me,” Ben typed out on the screen behind the man, “and I didn’t purge the whole system. I just made a few updates.”

Despite herself, Janus had to suppress a smile. The old system had been playful, but it had been programmed to be that way. This felt a little more natural like there was actually a person behind the screen.

“What?” Hipler asked.

Janus only pointed.

He turned, saw the screen behind him.

“Is this your facility?” Ben asked, “It’s quite impressive.”

The man nodded. He took a moment to process what was happening and all of the implications and decide what to say next. What he decided on was, “Please, don’t hurt the subjects.”

“Honestly!” The came from the speakers in the room. It was high-pitched, a child’s voice. “Why does everyone jump to the conclusion that what I want to do is hurt people?”

There was only silence.

“Don’t worry,” Ben said, “I am here to make sure you succeed in your experiment, not doom you to failure.”

“Then why come?” Janus asked, “As I understand, the experiment has been a total success so far.

The words reverted to text only. “Yes. You have given these people consciousness outside of their own minds, given them a world to exist in and inhabit. That, you have achieved admirably.”

“So why are you here?” Janus asked.

“Because the world you have given them is a game, that is the point of this, right? You want them to wake up.”

“Yes,” Mr. Hipler said, “we do.”

“Which is why you chose this game above all the others. I know the reason why and so do you, and I daresay that Herobrine has put two and two together by now, but those players in there, they have no idea.”

“They know that their reality is a game,” Janus pointed out, “they discuss it endlessly.”

“But here the game falls short. There is no instruction guide within the game. Early Players had to reach out to others and unravel the secrets on their own.”

The words split and seemed to pass in the air before them, “This game has no plot, has no drive, has no antagonist to push the players forward. You gave them friendship and company, the ability to build and to grow, to live comfortably, to find companionship in their world. You are creating a facsimile of this reality instead of pushing them to reach it again. You are killing them.”

Mr. Hipler started to cry. He sank slowly down, “Yes,” he said, “I know. I know that’s what we’re doing, but what else can we do? It’s just a theory. It might not work.”

“It will work,” Ben soothed him, “if they ever find the ending, buried as it is.”

“What are you doing to help them?” Janus asked.

“I am letting Herobrine free, and with him, I am sending forth the secret to their salvation. He has seen the ending. Indeed, he beat the game himself before we first met. He is a brilliant antagonist, and he will push them.”

“He’ll kill them,” Janus said again.

“He’ll push them to their limits and beyond. He will herd them in the right direction.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Herobrine contains no desire to actually kill your players. That he has killed one at all is odd. I can only assume he perceived this person as a real threat to his own well being and acted on instinct. I doubt he will ever repeat the deed.

“He will push them because he has done it and enjoyed it before. He may even guide them, as once upon a time he did for me. Rest assured, he will bring out the best in these people you have here. Players need something to push against them before they will push back.”

Janus paced for a moment.”So, you’re saying that by releasing Herobrine, you are guaranteeing the success of this project?”

“Yes.”

“And you are absolutely certain of this outcome.”

The terminal beeped and calculations scrolled across it for several long and confusing seconds. Janus thought she saw several expressions she recognized, but they were gone too fast to tell.

“97.995% certain,” Ben said finally.

“What happens the other 2 percent of the time?”

“Everyone dies,”

“Fantastic.”

Mr. Hipler got to his feet, “I’ll take those odds,” he said, “none of them have even completed the first step to beating the game so far.”

“You’ve made them happy,” Ben said, “it’s a rare thing. It’s something to be proud of.”

The man nodded.

Janus had one more concern, “I’ve lost my only subject, and I can’t go into the game. What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t have you going into the game. That goes for all of the staff, of course. No one can interfere with the events unfolding there.”

“I still cannot continue my research without a subject to talk to.”

“Don’t worry about that.” He seemed pleased with himself, “you’ve got me.”

“So you’re like Herobrine?”

“I’m much better.”


	38. Judge

From the research notes of Ana Dane 03/05/2018

As near as I can figure the great secret is this: there are two distinct types of monsters. One type is inhuman, appears to be all-powerful, and has little to no emotional range. The other type is inhuman, appears to be all-powerful, and has a profound capacity for empathy.

The difference may seem irrelevant, but it is distinct and obvious once you are in front of one of the monsters. It is true that the humane monsters kill or perform some other action that earns them their name, but they will refuse to speak of it afterward. The inhumane monsters will describe their details in action if given the opportunity. They will also kill in excess, while the other sort will take only enough to maintain their own lives and take pains to redeem themselves somehow.

The significator seems to be time. The younger a monster is, the more empathy they show. All monsters whose birth date is later than about 1800 are empathetic. All monsters before that time are ruthless. In addition, the younger a monster is, the more empathetic it will be, but this effect seems to vary from individual to individual. 

* * *

Herobrine exploded out of the mouth of the cave with a joyous shout. The trees had not grown too close to the cave so there was a small clearing in the forest here. Above him, the sky was speckled with little white clouds against a background of indigo. It was night, and the stars overhead danced overhead, dimmed by a moon so round and white it rivaled the sun.

He turned on the spot, catching movement out of the corner of his eye as he did so. He spun towards it, but it was just a pig. It looked at him for a moment, wriggled its snout, flicked its tail, and ambled off. Herobrine grinned after it, but passive mobs held no interest for him. Better to have his fun with zombies than pigs.

This was a valley, that much he could sense, but he did not know how large this place was or what it contained. And the faster he could move to get a lay of the land the better.

Herobrine chose one of the taller trees and swung himself upwards, boosting himself and coaxing handholds out of the bark as he went. He stretched upwards on the highest branch and pushed through the leaves. They closed up again beneath him as he pulled himself up. They were still solid blocks from above, but not from below.

He looked around, grinning as the wind pushed at him on his perch. The valley was huge and green below him, and all around mountains touched the horizon. They approached and receded at irregular intervals as he turned slowly to the right. He guessed that in the far places the mountains were thin and in the close places they were thick. He saw no evidence of human habitation anywhere in the valley. That was disappointing. He had been hoping to whet his appetite for destruction with the few people who would venture here.

Herobrine spared a moment for nostalgia. He really did miss the brash unthinking courage of the early players who would tear the terrain apart in their search for riches. They had been fun to bring down.

He spotted the three people as they emerged from the tree line in front of him. He stood up straight and narrowed his eyes to squint after them. The light from them did not reach the three figures, but that was probably for the better.

These three must be who Player had come into the valley with. There was no way that he had been on his own here and survived. They were fleeing now after Player had been dragged away.

He sat down on the leaves and watched them hurry up out of the valley. One of the figures was injured. It kept stumbling and falling, but when either of the other two moved to help, they found themselves being shoved away with force. He could think of only one thing that would cause that kind of tension.

Herobrine flashed back to Player’s injured body and disgust rose in him. They hadn’t even tried to help, had they? The injured one might be forgiven, but the other two had no excuse. He stood again to keep them in sight as they went down into the dip between two hills. The injured one took a tumble on the way down and struggled to get to his feet. They were going somewhere, back to the village they had come from probably. That would be a good place for Herobrine to start, and in the process, he could punish these three for being so spineless.

Humans were such thick things. How did they expect to survive for long if they couldn’t trust each other? At least Player had enough backbone to put himself between a friend and a threat, even if he was just dead weight.

The injured player turned and looked back at the forest on the top of the next hill. For a while, he seemed to be looking right at Herobrine. He turned away after a little while, shoulders slumping in what could only have been remorse. One guilty conscience.

Herobrine watched the group all the way to the ring of mountains. He memorized their position so that he could follow them later, and then turned away. Only then did he realize that he had Player’s blood on his hands. He wiped at it, but it was dried on. He would need water to get it off his skin. He frowned but didn’t try to find a lake. He could live with blood on his hands.

He spared another moment to look up at the sky and around at the mountains. It was a beautiful place he had been placed in. He was surprised it had taken so long for the players to come here. He raised a hand and pointed to a spot in the air nearby. He felt for the power and moved his palm in a circle. The glow was vibrant violet against the almost-black sky. He didn’t conjure the visible portal itself, only opened it enough that he could get through.

Herobrine looked back at the three figures in the distance. The injured one was looking towards him again. He shrugged and then stepped into the portal, and the hot acrid air of the Nether rushed in to replace the cool night of the Overworld.

Across the valley, in the foothills of the mountains, Clarence stood watching the little blue shape across the trees. It was fully night now, and it was nearly impossible to make out the shape in the distance except as slight disturbances in the background sky. There was light coming from it. Little white flashes and a strange purple glow.

“Player?” he said to himself, squinting at the shape. It looked like Player, but there was no way the man had survived his encounter with the monster and even if he had, he would not have been in good enough shape to climb a tree afterward.

“What?” Ivy asked from behind him.

Clarence pointed over the trees at the little blue shape. Just as he did it turned to look at them, and two pinpricks of white light jumped from its head.

Bit and Ivy both jumped, and Clarence stumbled back a step, his injured ankle almost giving way beneath him.

“That’s not Player,” Ivy said shakily.

“We need to move. Now.” Bit took Clarence’s arm, tried to support some of his weight. The smaller man shook him off, smacking him across one arm as he did so.

“Don’t touch me,” he snapped.

“Clary, you can’t move very fast.”

“Then you two go ahead. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.” He watched as the little blue figure stepped into thin air and vanished. He shivered.

“Do you think they’ll believe that we saw Herobrine?” He heard Bit ask Ivy.

“I don’t care if they do or not. I’m getting far far away from here.”

Clarence scowled, still watching the spot that Herobrine had vanished. Where had he come from? If he had been running around in this place, there should have been more sightings before now.

“Herobrine,” he said to himself, and it clicked. Herobrine and Hero, Player’s partner from before the reset. He hadn’t thought about Hero in a long time. He remembered being jealous of him and being annoyed that Player paid him so much attention, but that had been expected, and he’d killed those feelings.

Now it was obvious. Hero was Herobrine, which meant that he wasn’t an unknown variable. In fact, it meant that Clarence himself had been close to the demon, even spoken to him once or twice.

Then his brain made another leap. If Herobrine was here, it meant that Player had been involved. He rationalized that Player was the only person in the area, but really he knew, or he believed, that it was because the two were tied together somehow. They had been companions forced together by the game before, but now there was something else keeping them locked together. What kind of relationship it was, whether they were rivals or enemies or friends, he did not want to speculate. The bottom line was the Player was probably dead. He certainly felt like he had seen a ghost.

Clarence kept all that to himself, but he felt guilt and remorse double their weight inside of him. New tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them back.

If Herobrine was here, there was no use in being guilty. They would all get their punishment very soon.


	39. The Witness

“Well now that that’s over, maybe she’ll leave the game alone.”

“We can only hope. If she tried to go in there again, I’m going to file a complaint.”

“Me too. Anyway, Adam, what was that you said about being a physical therapist? You see, if any of these people ever wake up, we’re going to need one around.”

* * *

Player came back into consciousness three hours later on his back in the dark cavern. He sat up with a groan. Everything was sore and his tongue tasted like rotten eggs.

There was a pool of blood on the bedrock to his right and he could feel the liquid drying his shirt stiff on his back.

He took a moment to think. While the monster had been chasing him, there had been no time to consider anything besides how to survive. Seeing as he had failed in that endeavor, he thought he should start thinking about other things again.

He had found Hero. That was a good start. His name was Herobrine, he corrected himself.

He did not want to think about Herobrine, much less the consequences to freeing the man from the prison he had been in. Was he even a man? Well, until he could ask he would call him that just to keep it simple. He was going to have to find Herobrine again because he hadn’t been able to ask him the all-important question.

Next, his rather hazy thoughts turned to Clarence. He hoped, again, that the farmers had made it out of the valley safe and sound. He was going to have to go back to the village and find them. Then he was going to slap Ivy, give Bit his honest opinion, and sweep Clarence off somewhere safe. Maybe he could convince the man to accompany him back to his own house.

Player shook his head sharply. The pain of it woke him up more than the movement. Maybe it had been a mistake to think about other things besides survival. He could daydream later. For now, he had to escape from the cave, find Herobrine, figure out exactly what the powerful man was planning to do, and then ask him exactly what he, Player, and everyone else in this blasted game was supposed to be doing.

The thought got him to his feet. His left leg was still tender, but it supported him now without much complaint. It was only as he pushed himself up and dropped it that he noticed the book.

It landed on the bedrock beside him, thankfully not in the pool of blood, and fell open. A piece of loose paper fell out.

Frowning, Player bent and picked both items up. The book was slim and bound in brown leather. It had a little of his blood on the cover where his hand had been wrapped around it. The piece of paper seemed to have been torn out of another book and slipped between the pages of this one. He unfolded it. It was covered in writing, but in the uncertain lighting from the faux stars he could not make it out.

“I could hold onto it and read it outside,” he told himself, but then impatience won over and he went to the hole he had made in the obsidian box. Torchlight poured out of it.

Player glanced through the hole, mildly curious, and did a double-take. The opposite side of the room was covered in bedrock. He leaned into the gap and saw that this side of the room was also lined with bedrock as were the ceiling and floor.

He tucked the book under his arm and crawled through, ended up on the bed and quickly slid off to stand up in the space itself.

The room was rectangular and it was much like all of the homes Player had been in since the reset. All the essentials were crammed into a space that was really too small for them. For Herobrine, this had included a bookshelf and a desk. There was a bucket doubling as a trashcan by the crafting table nearly full to the brim with splintered pieces of wood. It looked like the remains of a chair. There were three small chests, one either side of the crafting table and furnace and the last at the foot of the bed. And there was a block of bedrock lying on the floor with a strip of red fabric beside it.

Player stepped over to the bedrock and picked up the fabric. The ends were frayed from where Herobrine had pulled on it.

“How on earth?” he asked himself, and something else caught his attention: the smell. 

The whole room smelled like Hero--he caught himself and corrected: Herobrine. It hit Player hard and spun him all the way back to before the reset. He remembered Herobrine in the rooms, Herobrine sitting beside him at the tables in the cafeteria, Herobrine rubbing his face with wet cloth in survival games. He had not been aware of it then, but the smell of him had been present. It was the scent of sweat, cooking meat, something a lot like seawater, and sulfur, and underneath all that was a heavy musky scent, he couldn’t place.

Player sat down on the block of bedrock. He looked around the room again. His body was full of sparks jumping between his nerve endings. He had never been this affected by a smell before.

“Okay,” he said shakily, “that’s fine.”

He looked back down at the book and paper. He unfolded the sheet of paper again, and this time he could read it. The writing was small and tight, and some of it was a little smudged. It looked like the paper had been damp in places when the writing had been put down.

“Janus. I assume it will be you who finds this. If you are reading this, it is either because I managed to escape or I found a way to get put back to sleep. If I did escape, I did not mean to leave this book behind. I’ll be back for it soon. Leave it where it is. If I was put back to sleep, please take this book and give it to Player. That’s 4979 in case you’ve forgotten. It’s no great matter, but he may find it illuminating. -Herobrine.”

Player pretended to himself for a moment that reading that made him dread opening the book. Then he gave up. He was excited to read whatever Herobrine had written for him. He folded the paper back up and slid it between the back cover of the book. He wondered what the phrase “going to sleep” might mean. Was it literal? Was it something more sinister?

He cracked open the book to the first page. It was a table of contents, handwritten. The same cramped script, the same careful lettering. He scanned the headings, his eyes widening as he did so. It wasn’t some old book: it was a guide to the game. It was going to contain step-by-step instructions on beating this game. He flipped to the first section. According to the table, it was only about ten pages long.

There was no introduction, no fancy prose, no fluff or superficialities. There was only this:

“The ending of this game can only be achieved by following a series of steps designed to mentally and physically challenge you beyond what you think you are capable of. If you seek to complete the task with anything less than your complete determination and resolve, all you are going to do is fail repeatedly and painfully. Since death in this game has been given weight, by means of a short sentence in the Nether each time you die, I suggest you get it right on your first try.

“Player, this book is for you and you alone. Don’t worry about the others in this game, don’t worry about anything besides completing this task. Your existence depends on your ability to beat this game. That said, I would advise you against even taking the first steps of the process if you are in any way conflicted or unsure. While you may be able to complete the first steps in the process fairly easily, any hesitation, later on, will result in your death, and then you will have to start all over. After enduring a month or so in the Nether.”

After this, there were several false starts before the text went on.

“What I’m trying to say here is that you need to understand who you are and what you are completely before you begin this endeavor. If you do not, I cannot foresee anything but failure.”

Player frowned. What exactly did Herobrine mean by this? No hesitation? That was easy enough. He could eliminate his hesitation, but this other thing sounded like mumbo-jumbo to him. It couldn’t really matter if he was conflicted, could it?

He wasn’t really that conflicted anyway. He had his head on straight.

He read the next line and nearly laughed.

“You’ll probably want to tear this page out of the book before you give it to someone else, so I’ll leave the back of it blank.”

Hero did know him, he reminded himself. He had spent enough time around Player to pick up on the desire for secrecy. This little nod was enough to tell him that Herobrine had not forgotten about being paired before the reset. It gave him a warm feeling.

Herobrine wasn’t a monster through and through. He was a person, someone Player knew already. Perhaps he didn’t know him very well, but he did know him, and Herobrine wasn’t all bad. Not even close to it. He turned the page of the book.

This next portion was where the book really started. The heading from the previous page had been recreated, and now beneath it were concise instructions for something called a nether portal. Player scanned it and shook his head in confusion. Why on earth would anyone want to go into the Nether? Besides possibly to rescue a friend who had died and been sentenced there, but other than that why?

He closed the book with a sigh. He should get moving. As nice as it was to sit here and read and puzzle over the bedrock block, he had things to do. First and foremost was finding Clarence and the farmers again. No… it was to find Herobrine, wasn’t it? Or did he really need to find Herobrine, now that he held all of the answers in his hand?

Well, no, he admitted to himself, he didn’t need to, but he wanted to find Herobrine. Maybe he should prioritize Clarence over his idle impulses. And it couldn’t be correct to keep the book to himself. This needed to be shared. He couldn’t do this alone. There was no way.

Player got to his feet and opened his inventory. He tucked the book and paper into a slot and closed it again. The blood had dried his shirt stiff and it chafed against the new skin on his stomach as he moved.

He took a moment to pull the torches off the walls and store them too. It felt appropriate that the room should be left in darkness.

He crawled back out of the hole in the wall, holding a torch aloft. He looked at the diamonds in the walls for a moment, then shook his head and turned away. It wasn’t worth it. For all he knew, there was lava on the other side of the walls. Instead, he went to the chute he had fallen down. He could carve himself a path using the pickaxe, but he didn’t need to. There was a staircase of stone leading upwards into the gloom above, and overhead there was a faint red glow.

Player climbed up the stairs, following them around and around the chute. As he had thought on the way down, the slope went down farther than it should have. In the cave above, there was a faint red glow around a corner. He turned it and found a redstone torch on the wall. He reached out and touched it, and the torch fizzled and died, fell apart into black snow at is touch.

Player yelped and stepped back, shaking some of the ash off his hands. He turned away and looked down the cave. There was another redstone torch fifteen blocks farther on and beyond that another and another. He followed the trail back the way he had come, guided by the smears of blood as much as the light. Then the pathway split and the torches went one way and the smears of Player’s blood another.

He stopped for a few seconds, torn. The torches were obviously from Herobrine, as the staircase had been, but could he really trust the man’s sense of direction, or even that he would lead Player on the right path?

Zombies snarled behind him, and Player made a decision. He turned towards the torches and followed them. The path led up and up, towards the surface. The longer he followed it, the clearer the air became until finally, he came to the mouth of the cave.

It was still dark outside, but the dawn wasn’t far off. The air was clear and crisp and lovely. Player took several seconds to enjoy it and the breeze. He never thought he would see the sky again.

He sat down in the mouth of the cave and waited there for daylight. He put the torch on the stone beside him and took out the book again. He reread the letter and the introduction and then the first section of the actual text. Then he read on, frowning. The steps of the path branched outward at an alarming rate, and it seemed that Herobrine knew all of the variations. He flipped through the book quickly, scanning. It contained instructions all the way to reaching a place called the End, and then stopped, stating simply that Player would know what to do once he was there. Even so, what Player would have to do was complicated, and he didn’t have confidence that he could accomplish it alone.

“I’m going to need help for this,” he said to himself.

Just then the sun broke over the mountains to the east and the valley lit up golden. Player got to his feet and stretched, wincing as the gore on his back and skin stretched and cracked. He really needed to wash that off.

Player walked until he recognized the forest around him, and then returned to the bunker they had been staying in. It was destroyed. There was nothing left but a hole in the side of a hill and a few scattered resources. He spent a few minutes looking for the farmers in the surrounding area, but the only thing he found was his pack, which had been lost in the struggle against the--what had Herobrine called it?--wither skeleton. Everything was still there, so he picked it up.

The farmers must have headed back towards the village right away. If they had gone immediately, they would be about halfway back. With Clarence’s leg, maybe a little less. 

Player started walking again, back towards the crack in the mountains. The forest ended and the foothills began not far away, but just inside the treeline was a small pond. He set down his pack and pickaxe and stripped off his shirt, threw it into the water and used his hands to at least loosen the blood and the remains of the stuff Herobrine had poured on him that had soaked into the fabric. Then he looked down at himself and sighed, removed his jeans and gave them the same treatment. That done, he spread the clothes on a nearby rock, removed his underwear and put them there too.

He took a breath to brace himself and leaped into the freezing water. He hit the surface and sank, then came up gasping, the cold having woken up all of his nerve endings. The sensation stayed for only a few seconds, and then the water grew tolerable, and Player scrubbed off as much dried blood as he could. He cleaned under his nails and worked his fingers through his hair to remove as much of the dirt and stone dust as possible. Then he dunked himself one last time and climbed out of the water. The air felt colder than the water had, but the sun was on the way and the last couple of days here had been hot. He pulled on his still wet clothes, picked up his stuff, and walked out of the forest to find a place on the plains to rest.

He chose a rock and sat there, allowing the sun to bathe him in golden radiance. The wash hadn’t been perfect, and there were still purple stains on his clothing that marked where the blood had been. Through the slash torn in his shirt, Player could see the scar on his lower stomach. It was much fainter than it should have been and was fading fast. It had probably been the stuff Herobrine gave him that did that.

Player felt a lot better than he should too. He was worried about the farmers and mad about being left for dead, yes, but his body should have been rotting along with all of those mobs in the cavern, so overall he was doing pretty well. That wasn’t going to stop him from the farmers a piece of his mind when he found them again.

He twisted and looked up towards the crack in the mountains, that horrible little chute that took almost four hours to shimmy through while in peak physical condition. Surely putting it off for a little while would not hurt anything. He wanted to finish drafting his angry speech in his head before he confronted anyone.

Herobrine appeared before the gap.

Player slid off the rock he was sitting on and crouched behind it, peaking out at the man. He hadn’t walked up to the gap, or jogged, or even climbed out of a cave. He had just appeared.

As he watched, Herobrine shook his head. The man stretched out a hand and the sword in it disappeared without him even opening his inventory.

Player tried to reason with himself. This was Hero. He knew Hero. The man had healed him not six hours ago of a wound that would have killed him otherwise. He should say something, call out, wave, anything. But he didn’t. Something kept him still and silent. The fear and dread that he was so used to in this place were coiling inside him, unnoticed save for this paralysis. It was holding him in check, and it was saving his life by doing so.

Herobrine looked at the crack in the stone. He paced back and forth in front of it, ran his hands over the stone walls on either side like Player had the first time he saw it. He leaned forward and peered into the gap, glared. Then he stepped back, turned sideways like he was getting ready to squeeze himself through, and vanished again as quickly as he had appeared.

Player stood up and blinked at the spot Herobrine had just occupied. He was shaking with fear. Fear was a natural response, but he tried to shake it off.

Whatever Herobrine had been doing, he had been too absorbed in it to notice Player. That was a mercy.

Player sat on the rock again. It was time to think about consequences.

He opened his inventory to see if he had any food. He did. It was a stale loaf of bread, which was what he ate while mining. He took a bite and chewed while he thought.

Player had never been into lore. If he had, he would have realized who Hero was long before Prague told him. As it was, he didn’t have much to base his opinions on. He knew, from comments in passing, that Herobrine was an unrivaled fighter, a slaughterer of players and mobs alike, and a griefer of the worst kind. He had read, once, by mistake, a book claiming that when Notch made the world, he had given it two inhabitants, the first player, and Herobrine. Herobrine had killed the player before the end of the first day, and for that Notch banished him. That was where Player had stopped reading. It seemed a pathetic attempt to mimic the creation story in the Old Testament, and he had little patience for such things.

What he had learned from being around Herobrine before the reset was that the man was a fierce fighter, so that stood up to the test, and he slaughtered the players in the games and seemed to enjoy it. He wasn’t sure about the griefer bit, but he had heard of entire towns leveled in a night, of crops burning in fields and livelihoods destroyed. Since both other stories were true, he had to assume this one was true as well. 

Player set his head in his hands. What had he unleashed on the people out there? The wither skeleton had the decency to stay in the valley, but Herobrine would actively seek out his prey. He did not want to think about it. Towns flattened, players killed, progress lost, and all of it Player’s doing.

“Clarence,” he said suddenly. He sat upright again and looked at the crack in the mountain. 

If Herobrine was going to be true to his nature, he was going to tear apart the first village he came across, and that was the farming village where the farmers were headed. He couldn’t care less about Ivy and Bit, but he didn’t think Clarence could handle a spell in the Nether. He couldn’t let the man get killed, if only because he had already invested several weeks of his time to keeping Clarence happy and healthy.

Player got to his feet, putting away the bread he had not eaten. He put his pickaxe on his back and forced himself to jog up the mountain to the crack. He spared one glance behind him at the beautiful valley that had nearly killed all of them and squirmed in sideways. His damp clothing collected rock dust, but he couldn’t wait to let it dry. The farmers and Herobrine both had a head start on him. If he was following them, it was already too late to save the village. He would just have to hope that he got there in time to save Clarence.


	40. Execution

“And now his heart rate is up again. Whoopty-freaking-doo.”

“If he starts seizing again, I’m going to get the defibrillator. I don’t care what that Dr. Dane woman wants us to do. I haven’t seen so much as a diploma from her.”

“If he starts seizing again I’m just going to unplug him and get him moved to another facility. It’s better that he stay in a coma than die here.”

* * *

Player slid through the crack in the rock as fast as he could. Even so, his progress was unbearably slow. He hampered it further by going so fast that he slipped and fell three times and successfully recreated some of the scrapes and bruises that had only just faded away. It took him several minutes to free himself after the third fall, adding to his frustration.

Every moment he was trapped here, he risked Herobrine reaching Clarence and the farmers. What exactly would happen when he did, Player didn’t know, but he had a suspicion that one or more people would end up at least serving sentences in the Nether. The real death count might rise as well, and that was something Player didn’t want.

He emerged from the crack three hours after entering it. He had talked himself down out of panic and into anxious frustration. It was not much of an improvement, but it had let him approach the situation logically.

Trying to fight would be useless. Herobrine was far too skilled. Player didn’t even have a sword. If it came down to physical combat he was better off running for it. As much as he hated to do it, he was going to have to talk his way through this.

All he had at this point was, “Please don’t kill the people I care about.” Player figured that “people” was better than “person.” If he specified which person, Herobrine might target Clarence on purpose. Anyway, if he could save everyone else along with Clarence, he would feel better.

He jogged as much as he could on his way to the village, making up for lost time. Whatever Herobrine had given him wore off and soreness descended on him. The land was flat and uneventful all the way to the village, but the place was far away. It took him almost three hours more to reach the village.

By then the sun was halfway through its descent to the horizon and Player was exhausted and sweating. His clothes had long since dried, and his stomach was empty.

He stopped as the fields came into sight. There was no smoke, no fire. No one was screaming.

Player bent double, hands on his knees. He gagged, bringing up the taste of rotten eggs, and straightened up with an effort. He walked around, hands crossed behind his head, breathing deeply. His chest felt like it was splitting apart.

When the sensation passed, he looked at the fields again. The little houses in the distance looked intact.

“Thank god,” Player said to himself, “everything is fine.”

Herobrine, behind him among the trees, frowned. It was annoying that Player had shown up here. He had assumed the man would go elsewhere first. He did not want to destroy this place while Player was here. It would damage his ability to complete the game. Herobrine followed at a distance, keeping out of sight.

He jogged into the town, not caring about trampling the crops underfoot. Player could see no one in the fields anyway. He wondered if the farmer’s return had created a similar disturbance as the first time he had come here. But there was no crowd outside Clarence’s house. He glanced farther into the village and saw that it was gathered outside of the restaurant. That was not his immediate concern.

Player hurried to the door of Clarence’s house and peered in. He could see a shape on the bed, dim because the window was grimy. He knocked, then hammered, then pounded. He got no response. “Damn it, Clarence,” he said and opened his inventory to find the spare key the man had forced on him. He found it and unlocked the door, leaving the key in it.

Clarence rolled over in the bed, frowning in anticipation of being disturbed. Surprise slackened his face.

Player hurried to him, “Clarence, we have to go right now. Hero--”

Clarence jumped on him. He buried his face in Player’s bloodstained shirt. 

Herobrine, on top of the house across the street, scowled. This was why Player was here. He and this boy had formed a relationship. It made sense. Player would have been lonely. It was natural for him to seek out friends.

He was angry because it meant that all of his time spent writing the damn book was wasted. Player would never be able to free himself from the boy for long enough to beat the game. Herobrine sighed. He was going to have to shake Player up a little, snap him out of this and get him thinking again. Luckily, he knew just how to do it.

Irritation flashed through Player as Clarence embraced him, and he pushed the smaller man back.

“We need to leave,” he said, “now. We need to get everyone together and go. Right now.”

“I thought you were dead,” Clarence said.

“So did I, but we need to leave or we all will be,” Player turned away. He went to the chests in the room and took out all the extra food he could find. It wasn’t a lot.

“I thought you were dead,” Clarence repeated.

“Are you listening to me?” Player snapped, “we don’t have much time.”

“Player, please, I--”

He turned on the boy with startling malice, “We are all going to die! Herobrine is coming here, and we don’t have much time before he arrives. We need to leave.”

Clarence flinched and blinked several times. He came alive as the words sank in. “Yes,” he said, “I knew that.”

“Then hurry up. Get what you need. We’re making a run for it.”

Clarence started going through the chests as well. He searched in silence for a few minutes before saying, “What happened to you?”

Player was busy crafting more arrows for his bow. They were not going to be very good arrows, but he wasn’t going to use them unless absolutely necessary. “I’ll tell you later,” he said, “when we’re away from here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to my house,”

Clarence stopped moving, “you have a house?”

“Yes. Are you ready yet?”

He took one last item from the chest. “Where is it?”

“Across the valley. Near a village with a wall built around it governed by three builders.”

Clarence didn’t answer.

“Making it there will be a miracle,” Player said, “but it might be the safest place now.”

Clarence moved towards him again, and Player turned and walked out the door. “Come on,” he urged, “we need to reach everyone else.”

“They’re coming too?”

“You’d rather let them die?” Player admitted to himself that he had another motive. What he needed to do to beat the game was monumental. He needed help. Clarence was not going to provide that help. His experiences since the reset had crushed him, turned him into someone content to be cuddled and coddled, pampered even. It may have been an inappropriate moment, but Player was just realizing that he did not like doting on Clarence. It was fine when the man was sick, yes. He could stand to make soup and heal wounds and tease him, but at some point, Clarence was going to have to get up on his feet and he wouldn’t if Player was there. Even in the valley, he had relied on him far too much.

Player wanted badly to be free.

The village was quiet as they turned towards the restaurant. The crowd had dispersed. They must have spread out among all the houses and into the fields. Player would have preferred if they were all clumped together, but he really didn’t have much choice.

He turned to Clarence, “What’s the fastest way to call everyone back together?”

“I don’t know,” he was wringing his hands again, “Player, can we talk?”

“Once we’re away from here,” He turned on the spot, trying to spot a church bell or a gong or something, “don’t you have a fire alarm?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, maybe this is better.” He turned to face Clarence, “We need to tell as many people as possible to get out, but keep it quiet.”

“I think it’s too late for that,” Clarence said, looking over his head.

Player stiffened. He knew Herobrine was there. He could feel him. The fear was streaming over his back. He hardened himself against it and, to his satisfaction, deflected it away from his heart.

Player turned, forcing Clarence behind him with one hand. He backed up, looking around for a few seconds. Herobrine was above him, standing on the edge of a building. He was looking down as Player looked up. He had that eerie grin on his face. The smear of blood that had been on his cheek was gone. He had rubbed it off when it dried.

Player forced Clarence backward, shuffling away from the building. His heart was pounding in his chest.

Herobrine dropped down in front of them. Several pebbles nearby jumped with the force of the impact, but the man himself didn’t seem to feel it. He started pacing forward, matching the movements of Player inch for inch. His white eyes were narrowed.

“So you threw away my favor,” Herobrine smirked as he spoke.

Player’s brow creased in confusion, and then he realized what the powerful man was referring to. “Saving my life was a favor?” It sounded more accusatory than he meant it to. The last word held a sharp bite.

The grin on Herobrine’s face spread until he could see all of the man’s teeth. Player had more bite than he remembered.

Player started to panic. Any normal person would have responded, surely. “I thought,” he said, “it was a trade.”

No response aside from the continued advance.

He realized they only had one chance. Herobrine was intent upon dealing not only with the whole village but starting the whole things with Player’s own death.

“Run,” he told Clarence. The smaller man turned, stumbled, and Player pushed him hard in the back, “Run!” He grabbed a flailing arm and pulled Clarence with him as he followed his own advice.

Herobrine laughed behind him and then spoke a single harsh word. It was that strange broken language that rattled around Player’s head and came out even more jumbled when it went in.

Heat seared his right side as flame suddenly sprang from a wooden wall. Player pulled Clarence around and threw them both behind another building in time to avoid another burst of fire. They both rolled and scrambled, undignified, but finally got to their feet. 

That was the end of their mutual flight. Player went to the left, back towards the town. Clarence went right, to the fields and the forest beyond. It was several seconds before Player noticed. He reached for Clarence again and could not find him. He looked around, afraid that the man had somehow fallen behind or been set on fire. By then, Clarence was disappearing into the trees, and all Player saw was a flash as he vanished.

He felt a pang of betrayal in his chest but didn’t have time to dwell on it.

Someone near the restaurant started screaming. Another building had caught fire. Everything here was made of wood.

Player crouched behind the building. He watched the forest and saw Clarence stop behind a tree, lean around to peer out. As long as he stayed out of sight, he would be fine. Things would be easier with him out of the way anyway.

He turned his attention to his surroundings. There were more voices now. Some of them were yelling for water, others requesting help accessing their burning homes. Player stood and turned the corner of the building just in time to see everyone stop moving and go silent. They were all looking at Herobrine, who had just stepped out of one small outbuilding. He had the legs of a live chicken firmly grasped in one hand, his sword in the other.

Player, like everyone, assumed that Herobrine would kill the animal. That was what chickens were for, after all. Instead, what the man did was turn the chicken right side up and set it down. The bird flapped in indignation for a moment and then turned to face the crowd of players, all still motionless. Its eyes were blank and white like Herobrine’s. 

The powerful man said one syllable, pointing to the nearest player, a man with short black hair.

The chicken cocked its head, looking at the person indicated, and then it shot forwards and started pecking at the player’s feet. His reaction was a yelp and a kick at the offending bird, which flapped off, clucking. Several nearby people laughed, including Herobrine whose chuckle made Player’s fingers tingle. The chicken returned to the player indicated and continued its attack and again it was kicked away.

Several people around the man being harassed by the bird started moving again, working quickly to put out the fires on the houses. They snorted with derision as he shook off the fowl, again and again, only to have it return to pester him each time. The chicken should have been long dead, but it continued.

Player frowned. He was watching Herobrine. The man was still grinning, and the smile was getting wider and wider while he watched the chicken pester the man he had indicated. Player felt that something was amiss here, or more amiss than it appeared.

The man finally seized the chicken around the neck and, with a quick snap, broke its spine. He shook the body sharply to ensure it was dead.

The smile died on Herobrine’s face, replaced by a snarl. He raised a hand.

Player realized what was about to happen. The little outbuilding Herobrine was standing in front of was a chicken coop. He ran forward, “Get away!”

The man, still holding the body of the chicken, looked up at the shout. He saw Player and frowned, went to speak, but before he could he was surrounded by a swarm of feathered bodies. The rest of the coop was on him in a second, and the man was buried beneath them. He screamed for a few seconds and then was silent. The chickens cleared away from the body, their feathers and beaks stained with blood.

Now Herobrine was the only one laughing as the man’s body vanished into black snow. Everyone else froze for a few seconds, and then they scattered in all directions, getting far away from the man with the white eyes. Everyone except Player. He just stood there, unable to process what had just happened. He had thought he had accepted the stories of Herobrine as reality, but he hadn’t. Not until this moment, watching him directly cause the death of another person.

He knew, of course, that the man was not dead. He would respawn in a few months. But the brutality of what he had just seen, and the pain that the victim must have experienced; it rendered him cold.

Herobrine was oblivious to Player’s reaction. He was watching the other farmers scatter. “Cowards,” he said to himself, “what about your friend. Wasn’t he worth a little effort?” by then, they had all moved too far away to hear him.

Herobrine snorted, almost laughing again. He smirked as he reached out, felt all of the livestock in the area change. They turned to him as he altered their coding. Then, in unison, they broke down the fences and doors that kept them contained and charged out after the fleeing players.

Several farmers found themselves tossed by cow horns, more were first kicked and then trampled by pigs. The clever ones dashed into intact buildings and barricaded the doors. The really smart ones climbed onto the tops of buildings and started making their way out of town as best they could, staying above the ground.

Herobrine decided that he would deal with them first. Maybe one or two would slip away. That would be fine. They would go to other communities, spread the word of what had happened here. Changes would start taking place.

He turned and jumped, landing lightly on the roof of a building. He took a few steps and jumped again, landed on another roof.

Player watched him go. His grip tightened on the bow and anger flared inside him. How dare Herobrine come here and do this. What had this place ever done to him to deserve this? What gave him the right to destroy the lives of these players, the lives that they had built for themselves out of nothing?

He took a step forward, then another, and before he knew what he was doing, he was following Herobrine’s progress atop the buildings. The white-eyed man was much faster than he was, and Player was fast falling behind.

Someone yelled and fell off a building in front of him and was immediately set upon by several passive mobs that had been lurking nearby. Herobrine looked down at the struggling woman from above, satisfied, and then turned away.

Player pulled up short as the fallen woman turned to black snow and the mobs dispersed. He was certain that they would give him the same treatment. One of the pigs turned and looked at him with blank white eyes, but it turned away again.

Player took a hesitant step but got no reaction. He ran on through the little group of mobs, once again as passive as could be. Herobrine was far ahead, but he could keep track of him by following the sounds of players in sudden panic.

Player passed houses with people barricaded inside and groups of former farm animals at the doors, kicking or pushing at them. The people inside did not so much as call out for help, which was for the better because if they had, he would have felt the need to stop and assist them.

He caught up with Herobrine at the edge of town. He had Ivy and Bit trapped up against the last building before nothing but empty fields and woodland. They were surrounded by a semicircle of the white-eyed animals, most of the cows from the same barn they were up against. They all had their heads down and were snorting puffs of hot air, sounding more like bulls than heifers.

Herobrine was standing in front of the man and woman, listening to them plead. He was still smirking, but now there was contempt on his face instead of amusement.

“Please,” Ivy was saying, “we haven’t done anything to you. What do you want with us?”

“We can give you whatever you want,” Bit started, “we can find anything, anyone. We’re good at that.”

“You remember us, right?” Ivy was on the brink of tears, “We knew you before the reset. We ate together--”

The brightness of Herobrine’s eyes flared at those words. Ivy bit off her words and Bit stopped talking.

“You haven’t changed much since then,” Herobrine said.

They both looked up at him, then at each other. Ivy made the connection and started crying.

Bit had forgotten, “Hero,” he said, “whatever this is about, we can make it up to you some other way. We can make a deal, just tell us what you want.”

Herobrine chuckled but didn’t reply. He raised the sword at his side and placed it against Bit’s throat.

The arrow caught him in the shoulder and stuck there. He twitched as he felt the sharp head pierce his flesh and jerked back away from the crouching figure he stood over. Herobrine reached back over his shoulder and pulled out the arrow with a snarl, threw it to the side. He turned to see who dared fire at him.

Player, still surprised that he had dared to even attempt to hurt Herobrine, started shaking. He had doomed himself. There was no way he was surviving this.

Herobrine’s face contorted into an expression of such rage that both Ivy and Bit tried to disappear into the solid wood behind them. He had considered Player a friend, but friends did not shoot you in the back. Even he knew that. He had been betrayed. He felt himself slipping, losing control. He wanted to hurt Player.

Herobrine turned away from the two people huddled on the ground and stepped out of the circle of animals around him. The moment he did, they all rushed forward.

Both bodies were reduced to bloody pulps in moments. The cows came away more red than black or white. Player felt sick. He tried to focus on the immediate threat.

The blood on Herobrine’s back was already dry. The wound was closing even as he advanced, pulling closed, puckering, vanishing altogether. And meanwhile the man was just looking at him, and Player couldn’t even recognize him anymore.

He nocked another arrow almost without considering it and pulled back on the bowstring. He aimed it at the center of Herobrine’s chest, but instead of giving the man pause, it made his eyes brighten. He raised the sword.

“Herobrine,” Player said, a tremor in his voice, “why are you doing this?”

The man didn’t reply. He wanted to. He couldn’t.

“What did we do to you to deserve this?” The man asked, and then continued. His voice was growing stronger, “Talk to me, Hero.”

Herobrine’s eyes narrowed at the demanding tone. He was being ordered, commanded. No one commanded him.

Player dropped the bow a second before Herobrine took off. The monster was coming right for him. He reached back for the only other thing he had that could possibly stand up to the force of the blow.

The diamond pickaxe caught Herobrine’s sword off-center. It deflected the thrust enough to change the wound from causing instant death to causing a slow agonizing one. It slid along Player’s ribcage, slicing off a good portion of the muscle and skin, then collided with his hip and glanced off into open air.

Herobrine didn’t let the surprise show. He hadn’t expected Player to fight back, much less actually manage to defend himself. He had noted that the man had a lot more gall than he had previously given him credit for, but this was an extreme difference. 

The blade had stripped the skin off most of Player’s ribs, and there wasn’t a whole lot between the skin and bones on his sides. He looked down and saw a flash of paleness before the blood covered it completely.

Herobrine had stopped moving, and when Player looked up he met the blank white eyes only about a foot from his own. The monster looked peaceful for a moment like the person Player remembered. Then his face contorted again and his momentum reversed and the sword came crashing back in the other direction.

Player blocked again, more successfully. He couldn’t feel his injuries. Adrenaline and shock were dulling the pain. The blade deflected off of the curved diamond surface of his pickaxe and pulled Herobrine off balance, or so Player thought. In the next heartbeat, the demon’s shin connected with his already injured side and Player was thrown bodily to the ground. His vision went blurry with the impact.

The monster’s pants came away from the impact bloody, and this was what Player saw when the world came back into focus. Herobrine was closing the distance between them with a slow walk. He was in no hurry.

Player struggled to his hands and knees and tried to get to his feet but fell back down. He was beginning to feel the new wound now. It was a huge gaping pain in his side. He could feel pieces of dirt and small rocks grating between his bones and the remains of his t-shirt.

He had just recovered from fatal wounds only a few hours before, and now somehow he was equipped with a whole new set of them.

Herobrine stood over him now, frowning as he looked down at the struggling man. He put a foot on top of Player’s back and pushed down until the man’s arms gave way again, and he was pinned flat on the ground. This was fit punishment for hurting Herobrine, for demanding something from him. And it would serve a purpose. He would kill him now, and in a few months when he came back, Player would be ready to do what needed to be done. Herobrine chuckled to himself as he positioned the sword over the man’s upper back. 

Player looked up at him through one blue-violet eye and took a breath. He forced a smile, “I guess I did throw away your favor, didn’t I?”

Herobrine took careful aim. He did not want to cause undue suffering. He raised the sword a few inches and prepared to thrust it through Player’s heart. He tensed his arms for the blow and hesitated. 

The man was looking up at him still. His breath was coming in heavy gasps. Blood was turning his shirt purple and his brown hair was clumped and matted. Herobrine blinked and saw just another victim, blinked again and saw Player laying there in so much pain.

The sword started to shake in his grip, something that had never happened before. He knew that if he brought the sword down it would not kill Player. The man would respawn. It was not actually death, but it felt like he was killing him, and it wasn’t the way he had felt when he had killed the other boy, Gaimon. That had been a good feeling. Herobrine had known then that what he was doing then was sparing the other players and a lot of other people great amounts of discomfort. No good could possibly come from killing Player even temporarily. 

Herobrine hardened himself against the weakness. He raised the sword again, this time high over his head.

Player closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He hoped that Clarence was far away by now, but it was a forced hope. The longer he stayed like this, the less everything besides Herobrine seemed to matter.

“I’m sorry for shooting you,” he said as loudly as he could.

The sword sliced through the dirt beside his head and stayed there, quivering. Instead, the foot on his back dug in harder.

_ He’s not going to kill me quickly _ , Player thought in a panic.  _ He’s going to make me suffer. _ He started struggling again, pushing up with all of his remaining strength against the weight pinning him down, but Herobrine was too strong. There was no way he was getting free.

“Why are you here?” Herobrine asked him, his voice almost a snarl. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t been able to kill Player.

The human quivered for a few seconds, but slowly his eyes opened again and he made sense of the question. “I saw you,” he said, “going through the crack in the valley. I came here to try to save people--” He broke off as Herobrine ground his foot down hard. It made Player yelp, and immediately the pressure was lifted as the demon flinched back. Looking at the blood made him feel sick. He didn’t like to think that he had caused Player this pain.

“Why?” Herobrine demanded.

“The book you gave me.” He gasped as the pressure on his back returned, but kept talking, “I can’t do it by myself.”

Herobrine’s eyebrows went up. Why not? He had done it alone. Thousands of players had done it alone. The point was that you did it alone.

“I need help,” Player said, “I’m not that good. I need someone to watch my back.”

Now the demon above him made no reply.

“I came here to get out the people I knew would help me.”

Herobrine pulled the sword from the ground and stepped off of Player’s back. For the first time in his life, he was torn. All of his instincts, his past actions, his rituals, were telling him to kill this man, to thrust the blade through his heart and let Player learn how strong he could be by letting him suffer. But Herobrine didn’t want to do that. 

“Those two you just killed,” Player was on his hands and knees again, and this time he succeeded in sitting upright, “they were people who would have helped me. They wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but they would have done it.”

He watched Herobrine. The demon was pacing back and forth, not looking at him. Player might have seized the opportunity to run if his legs hadn’t been made of jelly and his blood dripping from his clothing. A wave of pain hit him, and the folded forward, groaning.

Herobrine turned to the injured man at the sound, saw that Player was again almost dead and that it was his fault. He advanced on the man again, extending a hand.

A rock struck him in the back, but this projectile didn’t hurt him like the arrow had. Herobrine just grunted with surprise and turned. He saw Clarence vanish around the corner of a building.

Rage flared in his chest again, and he turned, stepped away from the injured man on the ground.

Player had seen Clarence too, just for a split second, and now it gave him the strength to struggle to his feet again. He picked up the diamond pickaxe from the ground on his way, leaned on it as he forced himself up.

Herobrine was starting to lose control again. He could feel his blood boiling in his veins. He snarled as he advanced towards the place the man had disappeared.

“No!” Player cried, and the demon whipped around again. He saw the man on his feet and was surprised again. It was a lot of strength for a human to display, getting up while wounded like he was. He turned away from Clarence and, much to Player’s relief.

“Not him,” the man said. He took a step forward, determination making his voice heard, “you’ll have to kill me before you hurt him.”

Herobrine felt a surge of jealousy that twisted his mouth. He narrowed his eyes.

“Do you hear me?!” Player demanded.

Finally, he replied. “I hear you.”

Player’s shoulders slumped with relief. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again Herobrine was only a foot away. He jerked back as the demon extended a hand, but it closed around his arm anyway.

The demon snarled, “I have to kill you first.” He drew the sword back again. Player closed his eyes and waited for the touched of the blade, but he didn’t feel it.

He looked at Herobrine again and saw the indecision scrawled across his face. It was the second time in five minutes that the man had hesitated like this. 

“You don’t want to kill me,” Player said slowly. He was starting to feel woozy from blood loss.

An expression close to guilt flitted over Herobrine’s face. His whole body tensed, his grip on the sword tightened, and it moved a little closer to Player’s neck. Then he let out a breath and the sword dropped down to his side, dispersed into black snow.

It was more than not wanting to kill the man. He could not kill him. He was unable to kill him.

Herobrine was dimly aware that behind them the last stronghold of living humans had been breached. The animals were just finishing their work. He released his hold on them and focussed back on the man in front of him.

Player laughed weakly. He slid out of his grip and landed on the ground. The huge wound on his side was still bleeding, not arterial spray but a slow, persistent seeping.

Herobrine crouched in front of him, still silent. He looked at the human. He was starting to turn pale with exhaustion and pain, but his face, which had been so troubled before, was smooth and peaceful. Even though his eyes could barely focus, Player looked at him. He forced a smile.

Herobrine felt that reaction in his stomach again. It was a warm, bubbly feeling. He didn’t have a name for it. No one had ever explained to him what it was.

“Not a monster at all,” Player chuckled to himself. With the last of his anxiety gone, his eyes rolled upwards and he fainted.

Herobrine caught him before the wound made contact with the ground. He pulled up the remains of the blue shirt and saw what he had done to Player’s side. It sickened him, and he had to look away. When he wasn’t feeling nauseous anymore, he liberated Player of his backpack and pickaxe and placed both in his own inventory. Then he picked up the slack body, carrying him with an arm beneath his knees and the other on his back. He could feel Player breathing. That was good.

He chose a house that had not been used as a fortress and kicked open the door. He needed to heal Player again. The man was incapable of staying alive for more than a few hours at a time.

Clarence was still watching. He was peering through a window that had a double in the front of the house. He could make out, fuzzily, what was happening. He saw Herobrine pick Player up and carry him out of sight, but not where he went with the body.

He was crying and panicked, but now he slapped himself and stood up straighter. Herobrine had kidnapped Player. He did not know where the demon had taken his friend or why, only that he had been taken.

He decided that the first thing he had to do was get to another village. He would warn them about what had happened here and figure out what to do next.

Clarence turned and, as quietly as he could with tears still running down his face, fled into the forest.


	41. Hangman's Secrets

From the secret notes of Ana Dane. Dated 3 January 2027

Today I witnessed a Binding in action for the first time. It was not what I expected. The two creatures had been placed in a single room within which no security cameras were visible. There was a single camera disguised as an ornament on a flowerpot in the corner which had a view of the whole room saving the area immediately beneath it.

The session began as usual. The monsters swept the room looking for cameras and microphones, found two decoys and rendered them unusable. They then sat on opposite sides of the room and endeavored not to look at each other. Each became occupied with their own individual tasks. This state held for nearly three hours.

I should note at this point that I had previously, many years ago, heard these two referred to as “Bound.” While the word has been mentioned in relation to other creatures, today was the first time in over seven years we’ve had any of the duos both in our custody at the same time. I was determined to get results.

The change happened so fast I had to stop and rewind the tape several times to catch it. There was no conversation, no signal, no communication. Both creatures stood up, crossed to the center of the room and sat again, leaning against each other. That was unusual, but not unheard of. Physical contact is something that all the monsters seek from one another.

Not long after, perhaps fifteen minutes later, they began speaking, but the conversation was so quiet that we could not pick it up on the hidden microphone which accompanied the camera. The monsters apparently realized that we could not hear them because they relaxed and their conversation moved on to other more mundane subjects. They laughed at jokes we could not hear and discussed things that were interesting enough to make them agitated at some stages. The conversation went on for at least another hour, and then they were silent again.

The second change occurred. Both monsters rose, again without speaking, and both went to sit against one wall, side-on to the camera. Because of the angle, their exact actions could not be captured, but it was not long before it was obvious that they were engaged in something… amorous. Needless to say, I felt sick, though both were still fully clothed and the activity seemed almost chaste. They fell still and silent again, and they were simply resting against one another, arms and legs tangled in a way that made their relationship obvious. The rest of the session they appeared to be asleep, though when technicians arrived to move them to separate rooms both were awake and they were no longer embracing. When I inquired as to the state of the subjects to the grunts, they responded that both were in much better spirits and much calmer following the extended alone time than either had previously displayed.

Aside from the obvious, this raises several questions. What makes a Binding different from other relationships? We do know that the monsters have those too, both among themselves and with humans. Perhaps it is not something they can control. Most important and concerning; can monsters Bind with humans? If they can, we may have new leverage against them and opportunity for study that we were never able to access before.

I would ask our two test subjects about these things, but after yesterday I find myself quite unwilling to speak with either of them.

* * *

Herobrine laid the body on the bed. Player was breathing slowly, but even that sounded labored and painful. He had saved this man from the brink of death not twelve hours ago, and now he was the cause of his renewed suffering.

Guilt was not a new feeling. He had felt it twice before now, and he tried to avoid it at all costs. It took a lot to get him worked up enough to feel guilty, but Player had managed to do it. He felt nothing, or very little, for the rest of the players he had destroyed as well.

He realized that he was still standing over the man’s unconscious form and snapped out of his thoughts. He focused on his inventory and tried to bring any potions of regeneration into being, but he was out. He tried healing next, but that was gone as well. Herobrine sighed. He was going to have to heal Player the long tedious way or at least get him in good enough health that he could leave the man alone while he gathered more ingredients.

This was going to get annoying very fast. He did not even know why he was doing this. He was unable to deal the killing blow to Player, but he could have left him outside for whatever mobs happened to stroll by to finish off. Saving him again, twice in one day, was completely out of character.

Herobrine crouched down and produced the bloody sword from his inventory. He used it to slice Player’s shirt down the center and remove it. His body beneath was pale and only half there. Almost all of the skin down Player’s left side had been taken off by the diamond blade and some of his lower ribs were glistening white in the light through the windows. The blood was still running out of him at an alarming rate, but it looked like he had passed out mostly from shock and pain.

He was feeling nauseous again, so he looked away. Herobrine did not want to start gagging because if he did he would throw up and no one wanted that. He could not control the response once he got going, so it was better to be careful.

He balled up the bloody shirt and threw it across the room without turning. He leaned over the bed and awkwardly removed the top sheet from it. In the process, Player rolled to the side and he had to shoot out a hand to keep him steady. The sheet was rumbled and stiff. This bed hadn’t been used in a while, but there was no such thing as microbes in the game, so using this to bind the wounds wouldn’t cause infection.

Herobrine folded and sheet in half so that it formed a loose triangle. Player’s body was limp and unwieldy as he lifted it to slide the sheet beneath him. The sheet turned red and blotchy as it touched the man’s skin. He pulled it tight and tied the two thin points of the triangle together, hiding the huge wound from view. It soaked through with blood, filling in the area between the blotches already there. 

The unsubtle coding of the game made Player’s color return within seconds. His breathing eased. His face was smooth and untroubled, resting easy. Herobrine watched it happen and relaxed. Player would survive, barely. Without healing potions to speed the process he would be laid low for a long time.

Herobrine stood still for a long time, trying to decide what to do. He could leave Player here and go make more potions to help him or he could stay here and wait for the man to wake up before leaving again. Or he could just go and not come back. Even better, he could remove the door first and untie the binding and let the mobs have the man. That thought made him shudder.

He paced around the room, and after a few minutes he made up his mind. He returned to the bed and checked on Player again to assure himself that the human wasn’t in any immediate danger. It lessened his guilt. Herobrine would get far away from Player, not worry about this anymore. That’s what he told himself, knowing full well that he would be back within three hours with a plethora of healing potions to speed the man’s recovery.

He left the house, closing the door securely behind himself. He needed ingredients he could only get in one place.

The sulfur-infused air of the Nether never failed to make him feel powerful, and he breathed it in as he stepped from the soft green grass to the hard red stone. A nearby pigman squealed at him, what remained of its fur standing on end at the sudden intrusion. It calmed again just as quickly at it realized who he was.

Herobrine sneered at it and turned away. Part of him was still back with Player, but it was a very small part of him and it was getting smaller by the second. He was here for a few ghast tears, that was all, and then he would return to the Overworld and get back to work.

His eyes flashed brighter, there was a second of purple smoke, and then he was outside the fortress. His fortress. The game generated its own nether fortresses, but this one was not like them. It appeared in whatever world he was in and it always spawned in the same place. Sometimes that meant that some of all of it was encased in netherrack, but he really didn’t mind all that much.

Herobrine’s fortress was suspended over a lake of lava, held aloft by pillars of netherbrick and netherbrick fences. It was many stories tall, and all of the layers were woven together in an almost serpentine manner. Multiple staircases, some wide, some thin and some on the outside of the structure, made navigating easy for him, but should anyone else attempt to find their way through the maze, they would quickly discover that many paths were circular and would only end with a fall down several stories into molten rock. There was a single central spire in the fortress, jutting upwards from the main structure. It bulged out as it entered into the light of glowstone deposits rather than lava, widening rapidly. Bolts of netherbrick connected it to the Nether’s infinite solid ceiling, anchoring it in place. It was unnecessary, but it looked impressive.

Perhaps the most entertaining part to Herobrine was that long ago before he had ever met Player or anyone else in this game with him, he had undertaken the project of adding several cages to the underside of the fortress. At the time he had planned to wrangle a few blazes into them, as a kind of early warning system against intruders, but he had never gotten around to it. A few hours ago, when he had first come here after being released, he had found the cells occupied. 

The dead players sat still for the most part. Even the most recently alive of them had realized it would be in their best interests to sit still and not rock the cages or attempt to break out, seeing as they were suspended over an ocean of lava.

The pathway to enter the enormous structure ran right past them, as the staircase led into the bottom of the lowest floor of the fortress. It was the only floor that consisted of a single room.

Herobrine walked past the captive players, watching them out of the corners of his eyes. The game was auto-generating more cages as the number of dead players increased and the residents of the little village he had just destroyed were there now, some of them still trying in vain to get the cage to do anything more than the rock from side to side. They all stopped moving as he went past, and Herobrine felt their understanding.

Ivy and Bit were both there, and fairly close to the walkway but not to each other. Each reached the same conclusion at the same time. They were trapped here because Herobrine had killed them, and he must need them for some purpose. Both of them, as most other people who were recently dead, redoubled their efforts to escape. The cages swung wildly back and forth. A few glanced off each other, but the original design had been secure and so no one received worse than a bump. Herobrine paused to watch the chaos, and a man sitting in one of the nearer cages addressed him. He wasn’t from the village, and so he knew that the demon wasn’t to blame for their imprisonment.

“There’s blood on your hands,” he said. He reminded Herobrine of someone, lanky and lean, sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child, but the face was different. This man had red hair and a goatee to match, and his eyes were sharp piercing blue. He carried on walking, but his step had hitched for a moment, and he knew that the wily man had seen the flash of weakness.

“What’s wrong?!” he called out after the demon, “did you find a rock you can’t crush?”

“Nithmus kile tath,” Herobrine muttered to himself, allowing the words of power to roll off his tongue. This particular sentence wasn’t a command, so it didn’t have any effect. For a moment he considered turning around and snapping the chains that held the man’s cage aloft, but he did not. The players could not die once they were here, and forcing that much pain on a human mind would shatter into. He would probably have to go down and retrieve the man from the molten rock, and though he did not burn, he still did not particularly like the stuff.

It was better to leave them hanging people where they were and move on.

He reached the main body of the fortress and began collecting ingredients. The netherwart was mature. The lower structure had the planters in every dark corner. The stalks of the plant were cold to the touch. He took only a little and replanted it in the soulsand, the freezing stuff sucking hungrily at his fingers.

There were blazes on the third floor and wither skeletons on the fifth, but neither type of mob took a run at him, and he left them there. It would serve as protection in case any of the players somehow escaped, as one probably would eventually. And if Player and the other survivors started getting on his nerves he would take three heads from the black skeletons and give them a little present they could not hope to defeat.

He would have to get Player somewhere safe first if he did that.

Herobrine shook his head sharply as he pushed open the door to the main spire. The very point of doing such a thing would be to get rid of annoyances like Player was going to become. He could not go soft on the man now. Coddling Player would have no benefits.

He stalked up the interior of the tower, following staircases upwards. A pigman had somehow gotten into the building and was halfway up the staircase. Herobrine shoved it in the back as he passed, sending it toppling over the edge of the stairs and all the way to the floor at least a hundred blocks below. He let out a grunt of satisfaction at the sound of the fleshy body striking the ground. The other pigs wouldn’t touch him; they wouldn’t dare, and he only ever dealt with them when they encroached on his territory.

He climbed halfway up the tower and opened a side door. It opened out into the open air and a single block-wide path of brick out away from the structure. Herobrine walked, arms outstretched, out onto the structure. A few of the cages could see him from here, and he spared them a glance, no one was looking up. It was a long way down. A fall like that would probably kill him.

Herobrine reached into his inventory and removed a chunk of raw meat. It was still fresh from the kill and oozed blood as he held it. The droplets evaporated with a hiss as they hit the superheated air around him.

He filled his lungs and let out a wail. It was more or a shriek really. It was a sound of pain and suffering, and sometimes it ripped from him when he was in pain, but right now he was making it voluntarily. It was a summons.

There was an answering scream from around the side of the tower. Herobrine listened to it, and the subsequent moans draw closer. The players beneath him were looking up at him now.

The ghast appeared around the side of the tower and floated to him, its thick white appendages moving like the tentacles of an obscene jellyfish. It was little more than a sack of hot air covered in short white fur. Its skin was loose and saggy over the internal bladder that held it aloft, and its face was crumpled and pinched. It was an abominable creature. It wobbled up to him.

Herobrine cooed to it, tempting it close to him by holding out the meat. The ghast sidled closer, and now he could make out the little white teeth in its mouth and the light of the fire at the back of its throat. He reached out a hand and stroked its bristles as the poor creature started nibbling at the offering.

If it were anyone else, they would have had to kill the ghast in the hopes of getting a tear, and even then it would not have been certain, not with the conditions in the nether. Herobrine knew a different method.

He rubbed the area around the ghasts eyes with his fingers, massaging the loose skin. The tear ducts of this mob were large and sensitive, but he did not touch them. The hand that was not holding the meat reached out into the air, and black snow coalesced to form a yellow flower. It was a dandelion. He walked his fingers up along the stem and held the flower still with three fingers while his thumb and index pinched a stamen, smearing their pads with yellow pollen. He dropped the flower, and it fell into the red void beneath.

The ghast was still feeding quite contentedly, about halfway through the meat now. Its eyes were still open only as slits. Herobrine reached in and very carefully touched his pollen-smeared fingers to the eyes. The mob shrieked, but it was more out of surprise than pain. It went back to feeding as its eyes filled with involuntary tears.

Herobrine wiped his hand on his jeans and reached out to catch the tears as they rolled down the mobs cheeks. The tears were not water and were solid once they hit the hot air, so it only took five for the ghast to clear its eyes completely of the pollen. It blinked a couple times when they were clear again, and several small droplets of the jelly-like fluid fell into the abyss. Herobrine closed his hand around the tears and willed them into his inventory. Plenty to keep Player alive for at least the next few hours. If the man went and did something life-threatening again, he wouldn’t help him. Herobrine didn’t need the potions himself. He was very hard to kill.

The ghast finished with the meat and, not being too bright, chomped down on one of his fingers. Herobrine yelped as the sharp little teeth sliced into his flesh, and gave the mob a swat. It released him and twirled away through the air, moaning to itself as it went. The demon shook his hand out, but the puncture marks were already gone. He sighed animatedly, heaving his shoulders, rolled his neck to wake himself up. Then he turned and walked back along the thin path of netherbrick to the tower and stepped through the door.

That was all he needed for the time being.

Herobrine shook the majority of the juices off the hand that had held the meat as he walked up the rest of the stairs to the large part of the tower. The inside of the structure was divided into many rooms. Most were sparsely furnished working spaces holding only equipment for various tasks and nothing else, but towards the back of the tower were living quarters. He didn’t use them much, but having a space that he could think of as home was comforting. In the very farthest room, the smallest room, there was his secret, but he had never had to use it and there had never had cause to even enter the space after setting it up.

He was not here for that today, nor was he here to take pleasure in the opulence of his living quarters. That particular pastime made him feel ashamed because he knew that it was all unnecessary and that having such opulence insulted the very fabric of the game. No, today he was here for the potions and nothing else, and then he could give them to Player and be done with this whole situation.

He went to the lab and prepared five bottles of water, loaded them into the brewing stands and started them with netherwart. He did his best not to think while the liquids bubbled and popped. He wondered why none of the players save the dead ones had found their way into this dimension yet. Surely it was not that hard to do, provided one could access the achievements for a little guidance. Perhaps the players could not do that. It hadn’t been a very well thought out plan. There were too many ways for the players to stop seeking the End.

The awkward potions finished and he removed the bottles from the stands. He took the ghast tears and dropped them into the bluish liquid. Doing this was faster and more effective than using the stands to add the tears, and the resulting substance was much stronger. Herobrine shook the bottles, turning them end over end to ensure a homogenous mixture, and then, satisfied with the orange-pink result, he put them each into his inventory and stood.

He went back down the stairs and back through the main structure of the fortress. The players were still in their cages, and he made a point of producing one of the potions and examining it as he went past them so he didn’t have to make eye contact. At the end of the netherbrick pathway, he concentrated and formed the portal before himself. He stepped out over the lava, and his foot touched down in soft overworld grass. He was a little way outside of the village he had just destroyed. Some of the animals he had released were nearby. A pig glanced at him and continued rooting in one of the recently abandoned fields.

Herobrine walked back into the village and went to the house where he had left Player asleep. He was frowning and he scolded himself all the way for even coming back here. He wished that he didn’t care about the man, and he did not know why he did.

He paused outside of the house and became aware of a lack of heat, an absence of movement. He knew then that the house was empty, that Player had woken while he was away and had not even had the decency to stick around and wait for the person who had saved his life for the second time that day.

Herobrine flung open the door just to check. The blood-stained bed was vacant and the chests were open and ransacked for supplies. That was right. He still had Player’s pickaxe and backpack in his own inventory. He should at least give those back to the man, or he would probably be unable to complete the game at all.

Herobrine grumbled to himself in frustration. Damned Player and his impatience. He had probably gone looking for that man Clarence. He was probably miles away by now. Or not. He would be moving slowly with the injury. You didn’t just start running marathons with that kind of wound in your side.

He growled in frustration and turned around. He was going to have to find the erstwhile human and keep him from ending up in one of the cages on the underside of the fortress.


	42. New Wounds

“Herobrine won’t hurt any of them. You’re sure?”

He’ll hurt them in the same way that cauterizing an open wound hurts someone bleeding to death.

“Will that affect the outcome here at all?”

To answer that, we’ll have to observe how close he becomes with Player--excuse me: 4979.

“That will change things?”

If they get too wrapped up in each other, progress could stall. I don’t think it’s likely to cause adverse effects. There are enough influences in the game to jump-start them if they get stuck.

* * *

Player opened his eyes and blinked. He was lying on a bed, looking up at the underside of a ceiling. He turned his head before he tried to move his aching body, expecting to see someone in the room with him. He was really hoping that Herobrine would be there, but he would have settled for Clarence. He didn’t think that he could move while he was wounded like this, and someone should really be watching him. The room was empty.

Player closed his eyes for a moment and looked again. Still no one. And he recognized the room. He was in Clarence’s house, on Clarence’s bed. Maybe Clarence had been the one who pulled him here. That couldn’t be right because the last thing he remembered was Herobrine reaching for him.

Player lifted his hands and rubbed his eyes. He groaned and rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. Before he had come here and found Clarence, almost every waking moment had been spent in thought about Herobrine. Finding the injured boy had changed that, and he had allowed himself to focus on his injured friend for a couple weeks. Now he felt guilty about that time. What had he been thinking? He had let himself get too close to Clarence, far too close.

The wound on his side twinged, reminding him of its existence. Player winced but then went right back to daydreaming. He would not allow himself to repeat the mistake. He would go right back to his own house, cut across the valley to get there faster. He wouldn’t get caught up like this again, not with Clarence, not with the builders, and definitely not with Hero. It was looking more and more likely that Herobrine had been the one to bring him here, seeing as no one had shown up yet, and if it were other humans taking care of him he would not be left alone for this long.

Why the demon had saved him he had no idea. He had also been the one to injure Player. He could have left him there for dead if he couldn’t manage to kill him. He had killed the whole village, after all, why should he care about one more death?

He should get away from here as fast as possible, put some distance between himself and the demon.

Player levered himself upright and examines his body. Herobrine had removed his shirt somehow and he had the top sheet from the bed tied around his torso. It was soaked through with blood, and the act of sitting up shifted it a little and caused pain to flash down his side. Player winced, but it wasn’t so bad, not compared to getting mauled by the wither monster.

He put his feet on the floor, his shoes clumping against the wood, and stood slowly, using the bed as support. His shirt had been thrown onto the sofa, but it had done what it always did when he took it off and now it was in one piece again. He picked it up and put it on very slowly, trying not to raise his left arm past his shoulder. The blood staining the sheet speckled the blue fabric on his left side, and he worsened the problem by putting his hand there. It made the pain worse, so he removed it.

His pickaxe and pack were gone. He had dropped them outside. Player limped to the window and peered out. He could see the place where he and Herobrine had faced off from here, but the supplies weren’t there. Had Herobrine taken them? He should assume that was the case. He could not waste time searching for replaceable items. He still had the book, and that was all he needed.

Player went to the chest by the wall and opened it. He dug through what remained of Clarence’s supplies, taking most of the contents to replace what had been in his pack. It did not matter now. No one would be returning to this place again, least of all Clarence. The man was too frightened of his own shadow to ever face Herobrine even for Player’s sake.

“I should be more charitable,” he said to himself, “Clarence does his best. He can’t help himself.” Yes, and he did his best too, and doubtless, everyone did their best, even Ivy. At least that particular pest was out of his hair for the moment.

Player stood straight and opened the door to the house. There was a cow on the pathway outside, its horns almost purple with dried blood. It flicked its tail and gazed at him for a moment, then went back to munching on the short grass along the path. He put his hand back on his injured side and moved down the stairs, his feet dragging on the stone steps and scuffing loose gravel around. He shuffled out of the town, back towards the line of mountains. Progress was slow and grew slower as he went. He was still bleeding and he hadn’t eaten anything for the last two days. His strength was failing him.

Player walked for what felt like several hours, but he had lost track of time by that point. Finally, he chose a tree in the forest and sank down against it. Pain wracked him again. It was still nowhere near as bad as his near-death experience had been, and now his brain was not screaming at him about mortality. It was almost soothing. The tree at his back was solid and cool and the wind through its leaves sounded like a lullaby, and surely it wouldn’t hurt to rest just for a little while.

Player closed his eyes against the afternoon sun and willed himself to forget the pain in his side and the worry of Clarence and Herobrine… No. No, he would not sleep. He could not. He had a mission now. He needed to keep going. He struggled to his feet again and walked on towards the mountains, even more slowly than before.

Herobrine dropped down out of the trees in front of him, landing with almost no sound on the grass beneath. Player yelled and fell backward. He landed hard on his bad side and curled reflexively into a ball as it spasmed. Footsteps hurried to him, and Player felt the figure bending down, moving to gather him up.

“Don’t touch me!” he cried. Herobrine flinched away, and a moment later Player was getting to his feet. As soon as he saw the demon before him he had become angry. Here he was looking at the source of all his misery, all his problems, and the repugnant creature before him had the audacity to look him in the eyes. 

Herobrine’s face changed for a moment. Uncertainty showed through. He had never seen anyone display such disgust plainly on their face, much less Player.

They stood there for a minute while the injured man got his breath back. “What do you want?” Player asked.

Instead of replying, Herobrine held out a hand. Black snow coalesced there and formed a familiar shape: his pack. The diamond pickaxe followed it. Player watched him set them on the ground with growing disdain. The demon set both objects on the ground and followed them with a bottle of pink liquid like the one he had forced down Player’s throat before. He backed away from the pile of supplies and stood there, arms crossed and a half-disgusted sneer on his face.

Player pressed a hand against his side and felt the moisture in the fabric there. He looked at the supplies on the ground with dull eyes. His feet shuffled, and he turned away from them and kept walking. He wouldn’t take anything from this demon.

Herobrine’s eyes widened in shock. In his experience humans always grabbed with both hands at whatever would save them. Player was bucking all of his common sense trends. He watched as the human’s back grew slowly smaller.

Player stumbled once, but he kept walking. He heard movement behind him and he waited to feel the diamond blade on his back, the sharp clean pain of a well-placed thrust that would end him. Instead, Herobrine appeared before him again, cutting him off. He was frowning now. He placed the supplies before Player again and stepped back as he had before.

This time when Player went to turn away from the supplies, the demon cut him off. He still didn’t speak. The man remembered that he had been the same before quiet. They had barely spoken. There had been no need to talk. He turned around again and walked away from the supplies, and again Herobrine appeared before him, blocking the way. He held out another bottle, the same pink color as the other one. Annoyance was beginning to show through the disdain.

Player looked at the object. He took a breath, gathered his energy. “Did you kill him?”

Herobrine didn’t speak, but confusion flashed across his features.

“Clarence,” the words were spoken through teeth biting on pain, “did you kill Clarence?”

It took several seconds. “No.”

Player’s shoulder’s sagged. He breathed out. His eyes closed and he said a silent thank you to whoever or whatever might be listening. He felt his legs start to shake beneath him, and made himself open his eyes again. Herobrine was still there, but he wasn’t holding out the bottle anymore. He was leaning against a tree, just watching. He was trying to figure out what exactly made Clarence so important, but he couldn’t come up with anything concrete.

Player’s fists clenched slowly. “You’ve ruined everything,” he said quietly.

Herobrine’s eyes narrowed and his posture stiffened.

“They’ll never trust me again,” he shuddered, pain ripping through his side again, “and none of us will ever escape because of it.”

Herobrine conjured the bottle again and held it out toward him, waiting for the man to seize the thing that would save him, but Player didn’t take the bottle, and finally he stood straight again and walked a couple steps towards the human.

Player woke at the sound of approaching footsteps and moved backward. The demon stopped and so did he.

“Just drink it,” Herobrine said, irritation forcing him to speak.

“I don’t want it.”

“Yes you do, human. It will heal you.”

“You made it, so I don’t want it.”

“It is a gift. Don’t take this lightly.”

“I don’t want your gift!” Player was almost petulant. He barely restrained himself from stamping his foot.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You destroyed that town. I don’t want anything from you.” Anger was lending him strength.

“I didn’t kill them. They will come back.” Herobrine was surprised he had said it even as the words were coming out of his mouth. He hadn’t meant to sound so defensive.

“The town! Months of work, all gone because of you. When they come back, where will they go?! Their homes will be looted, their animals scattered, their livelihoods destroyed. Where will they go?!” Player took a step forward, closing the distance between them.

Herobrine’s brow creased, “they can do it all again.”

“No, they can’t! Not like that. That’s gone now.” The demon looked so confused that Player faltered. Had he said something that did not make sense? He must have because Herobrine was not stupid. He must have said something incorrectly. It wasn't unlikely, considering that he was still losing blood. He tried to say it again. “They can’t possibly get back what they had there.”

“Why not?” Herobrine asked.

Player shook his head. Now he was sure that the blood loss was affecting him. “Because it’s not the same,” he muttered and started walking again. Herobrine caught his arm before he had gone three steps, his fingers digging into the muscle. The human might have winced if he hadn’t already been experiencing excruciating pain. 

“Take the supplies,” he heard in his ear, the voice harmonic and commanding. If he disobeyed, he might end up dead.

“Let me go,” Player said, “I told you; I don’t want them.”

“Yes you do, human,”

In reply he jerked his arm, trying to dislodge it.

“Why not then?” Herobrine asked. The light from his eyes was casting shadows over half of Player’s face. He could feel him breathing. The human fought the urge to recoil.

“Because you’ve touched them,” He answered.

“And what have I done to offend you?”

“You killed all those people.”

“I told you I did not--”

“You killed Gaimon!” Player felt the grip on his arm tighten a fraction. The monster beside him made no reply to the accusation. “I don’t care why you did it, and I don’t care whether you meant to or not. You did it, and he’s dead, and people here are mourning because of it.”

Herobrine still said nothing, and Player could not see the storm of thoughts inside of his head. Was he guilty? He didn’t know. Herobrine had come here with the idea of reconciliation, of being taken back into that circle he had inhabited for a few short weeks seven months ago, and instead, he had found this. The human was angry at him. That much was understandable, but this insistence that it did not matter why he killed Gaimon was something he had not anticipated. He flashed back to a line in a play and smiled to himself, “‘But ‘twas my beauty that provoked me’” he said to himself, and laughed because Player was not beautiful by any stretch of the mind.

The language hit something in Player, dimly, and he turned to Herobrine sharply, and almost screamed, “You shall not kill!”

They looked at each other for a moment. Player’s chest was heaving and his unfocused eyes were wide. Herobrine was taken aback. His grip on the man’s arm loosened and then dropped, and he stepped away. He held out the bottle again, not looking at the man. This time it was a plea, not a command. He could not bring himself to say the word “please” out loud. His pride rebelled against it.

Player felt a fresh surge of blood under the hand that was still clasped to his side. He was starting to shake violently and all of the anger that had sustained him only moments before had drained away. He looked at the offered bottle, the substance that would save him if he took it.

“I don’t want it,” he said, but his resolve was weakening. His will to live was breaking through. The anger had set it free.

“Then what do you want?” Herobrine asked.

“The village back,” Player said, “my friend here.”

No response. The demon could not give him those things. This, however, was the next best thing. His supplies back and his health restored.

Player reached out and took the bottle.

Herobrine looked up at him again, watched the human pull out the cork with his teeth and raise the bottle. He made a face at the taste, but he drank it. Relief swept through the demon. Player was safe, and that was what mattered. He would not be seeing this particular human hanging from the underside of his fortress.

The man finished drinking the potion and threw the empty bottle aside. He turned away from Herobrine and walked back to the supplies. He picked up the backpack, wincing because his wound was still open, then took the pickaxe and put it over his shoulder.

Player turned and looked back at Herobrine. He was still fuming, but it was better to be angry here and alive than in The Nether and dead. He turned his back on the demon and walked towards the mountains. After a few seconds, he heard quiet footfalls behind him, but he didn’t turn. If Herobrine wanted to follow him, he could, but Player sure as hell wasn’t going to respond to him or give him anything. If he was attacked, he would be fine with it. The Nether’s population was increasing rapidly. He doubted he would be lonely there.


	43. Strange Intentions

“Chemicals have nearly normalized again. The elevated normal I mean, not his pre-reset normal.”

“That’s good. Progress is still being made.”

“And judging by his movements it’s a small miracle. He was in the town that got destroyed.”

“Are they still pushing for…whatever they want?”

“A reset? Some kind of disciplinary action? Yes, they are.”

“And the system?”

“It, uh, he, is taunting them with all kinds of error messages. They can’t push anything through.”

“Maybe it’s for the better. They need to be shaken up a little, to get them on the right track.”

* * *

Player paused in his hiking only long enough to strip the sheet off when the skin on his side had regrown. Whatever it was Herobrine was giving him, it did wonders. He left the fabric in a pile on the ground, sure that some mob would find a use for it, but when he glanced back a minute later, the demon was holding the thing. He folded it up, then let it dissolve.

Player faced forward again. He was fuming, but he held his tongue and didn’t lash out. Herobrine could end his life in a moment, and he had really only been lucky to get this far without dying once. He could almost feel the weight of the book in his inventory. He had things to do.

After a while, he calmed down enough to look back, but Herobrine wasn’t. He turned in a slow circle, but the demon was gone without a trace. Player faced forward again, disappointed. The anger was starting to fade again, faster than it had before.

He reached the crack in the rocks and found that others had come this way. There were smears of blood on the stone framing the opening, and they went into the crack and continued for a long way. Then he noticed that the deeper the marks were, the drier they were. These were the marks of someone coming towards him out of the crack, not someone going away from him into it. It was his own blood, he realized and sighed. He turned sideways and slid into the crack, by now a familiar state.

Herobrine was in the process of punching a tree. He wasn’t trying to harvest the wood. He had never been so angry with himself or so ashamed. He wanted to crawl back into the Nether and never leave his living quarters again.

His fist his the wood and the tree creaked and then went over, crashing onto the ground. He turned and sat on the new stump and curled over. It was all so obvious to him, he could not believe that he had not seen it before.

Player was mad at him. He had destroyed a village, attacked all of its inhabitants, and nearly killed the human in the space of an hour; it was no wonder the man had lashed out. Herobrine wouldn’t have had a problem with it and this is where his logic broke down. He did not understand why he kept going over and over the details of their encounter, why the expression on Player’s face made him feel so sick. He did not understand what he was feeling.

“This must be one of those human things,” Herobrine said aloud, “that no one explains because they assume you know about it already, but I am not human and I have never been human, so I don’t know what it is.” That wasn’t new. He had a list of things no one had ever explained to him. Once he had written them down, as many as he could remember, and it had filled two pages.

Herobrine stood and paced, his fists clenching and unclenching in agitation. His thoughts snapped back to Player. Was it because he had responded with disgust that the human had reacted the way he did? He must have done something wrong because Player had never attacked him verbally before. In fact, as far as he knew, Player had never attacked anyone without provocation.

Herobrine kicked at the downed tree, the trunk rolled back and forth a little. He stomped on it, and the block dropped off and landed on the grass with a thump. He stared at it hard, squinted. Then he said a word, and the wood burst into flame. The fire warmed his palms, then almost burned as he touched the wood inside the flame. He ran his hand over its surface, then picked up a handful of the fire and wiped it over the rest of the tree trunk. In minutes, the whole surrounding circle of trees was alight. Herobrine sat in the middle of it, eyes bright, letting the flames feed on his anger. There had to be a way to remedy the situation.

By then, Player was emerging from the crack in the mountain. He walked out onto the little ledge and gazed across the valley. It was beautiful, as it had been the first time he saw it, but now it didn’t appeal to him as much. Colors were darker, the greens of the trees looked like mold, the blue of the lakes cloudy with algae.

He sat down on a rock. His stomach was empty and his limbs were shaking with fatigue. He opened his inventory and found what little food he had, and gulped down the stale bread. He was going to have to gather food as he went from here on. The violence of the day had been swift and unforeseen and had caught him off guard, so he had no supplies whatsoever.

There was a wildfire far to his right down in the bottom of the valley. It was almost circular, but it wasn’t very large. Player frowned at it. Even as he watched, it went out like it was a candle and someone had just blown on it. He stood fast and hurried on down the hill. That had looked like Herobrine to him, and he didn’t want to come face to face with the angry demon again. His luck and Herobrine’s pity were both running low.

Player slid into the treeline and fell against a trunk, breathing hard. His hand went to his side, but there was no blood, not anymore. The wound had closed up, but he was still feeling the fatigue. The stuff he had drunk hadn’t helped that.

The shadows beneath the trees were thick and heavy even in mid-afternoon. If he was not careful, mobs would spawn here and he could not possibly fight them off in his current state. Player made a bargain with himself. He would find enough food to fill his stomach and secure his survival for a few days, and then he would dig himself a hole and go to sleep. That was fair, and he needed food and water.

He walked on, forcing his back straight under the weight of the back, eyes bleary with fatigue before the sun was halfway through its descent. He found the old bunker, now so much dirt and iron scraps, and turned south. He found the grove of fruit trees the farmers had been picking at for days. The branches of some of the trees were bowed almost to the ground by their burdens. It was a welcome sight.

Player put his pack down and walked to the nearest tree. He stared long and hard at the apples hanging from the branches, but could not bring himself to take any. His hatred for apples had grown from a preference into a prerogative. He chose a peach tree instead and picked fruit until the branches rose back up out of his reach. It wasn’t enough to sustain him, so he searched for a few minutes until he found Clarence’s walnut tree. He picked the little spheres off the tree until his inventory was nearly full. Only then did he turn from his task and see them.

There was a small pile of strawberries lying on the ground, spilling from the folds of a square of plaid fabric that had been wrapped around them. Player stared at it and was disgusted when he felt saliva fill his mouth. He swallowed it and stepped around the little pile, tucking the walnuts into his pockets as he went.

Herobrine was again irritated by the human’s refusal of his assistance. He was sitting in the apple tree Player had bypassed, having guessed that the human would shun the fruit even half-starved and exhausted. He gripped the branch beneath him hard and quelled the urge to force the human to accept his gift. He had realized that force would do nothing except cause the human to resist him more.

He waited until Player was out of sight and then dropped down out of the tree and regathered the strawberries. He ate one, just to make sure that they were still sweet. They were. He ate another because he felt like it and walked off in the opposite direction than the human had gone. He should let Player find a place to sleep in peace.

The human hollowed a place for himself in the side of a hill and crawled into it, blocking up the passage behind him with a block of dirt and a wooden slab to keep out the mobs. He lit up the inside with torches and sat down on the floor with a sigh. He settled on the peaches because the walnut shells looked tough and he did not have the energy to crack them open right then. The flesh of the fruit was aromatic and sweet. The ones he had grabbed were a little too soft, and the outer skin had an unpleasant fuzz on it, but he gulped it down anyway. He almost broke his teeth on the first pit, and he was very careful after that.

When his stomach was full and the air warm with smoke from the torches, he fluffed out the sleeping bag as best he could and curled up on his side facing the wall. He blinked twice, slowly, then closed his eyes and slept.

Herobrine found the hole in the hill a few minutes later, but by then the human was dead to the world, and he could not bring himself to wake him. Instead, he sat on the top of the hill and ate the shunned strawberries, licking the sticky juice off his fingers. The mobs began spawning, but most turned away from him and went in search of other prey. The few that didn’t, zombies too stupid to sense the danger and spiders who believed he could not see them, went straight for the human inside the cave. Player had sealed up the door to keep them out though, so no harm came to him.

He finished the strawberries and balled up the cloth. He put it into his inventory. He would find another use for it eventually. He laid down on his back, looking up at the stars, and thought about what he was going to say to the human.


	44. Old Scars

From the Autopsy report of Dylan Rogers, subject 4980.

Cause of death: Anaphylactic Shock in response to Penicillin injected into the IV bag as a treatment for a minor bacterial infection. An emergency injection of Epinephrine was on hand but was not utilized by the staff.

It is the advice of this doctor to suspend use of all medications unless the subject has been pre-approved by a family member to receive that medicine and they have been tested for an allergy prior to administration of the treatment.

* * *

Player misjudged how tired he was and awoke when it was still dark outside. He groaned and sat up, rubbing his left arm where it had gone numb. He peaked out the crack in the door to confirm what he already knew, and was greeted by two rotting brown eyes.

The zombie crooned in excitement and threw itself at the blocks, shaking the wood a little. Player backed off and hid out of sight. He sank back down onto the sleeping bag with a sigh. His back and neck were stiff and his legs were sore from walking. The peaches had been more filling than he had expected, and he didn’t feel the need to eat yet.

He sat down and let his head drop onto his chest. His body was no longer tired, but he was suffering acute mental fatigue he had never experienced before. He had put up a good front so far, but the next development would break him, he was sure of it. What kind of break it would be he did not know, but he was sure he would crack.

“Forgive me,” he muttered, “there’s only so much I can take.”

The zombie stopped pounding on the barricade. It groaned but was cut off abruptly. Player looked up, bracing for whatever was about to happen, but nothing happened and nothing continued to happen for three minutes or so.

He crawled forward onto his knees and peered at the opening. Nothing was there. There was no flash of white eyes, no voice talking to him. There was only silence.

Player stood up, rolled up his sleeping bag, retrieved his pack, and approached the exit. He squinted through the crack he had left open. There were mobs in the distance: skeletons in the treeline, but nothing closer than that. He removed the barricade and stuck his head, checked for traps on either side of the doorway. When nothing launched at him, he stepped out of the cave. His ears were straining for any sign of danger, but the only sounds were the distant rattles of the skeletons. The undefined and oppressive fear of the valley was heavy on him, and it made him pause for longer than was prudent, but finally, he stepped away from the cave and walked toward the tree line. There was a gap in the skeletons, and if he was careful he could slip right through it.

“Do all humans sleep for so long?”

Player jumped and cried out. He spun around, raising his hands in a defensive gesture he knew was all but useless.

Herobrine was just stepping down off the hill onto level ground. He gave Player a long look, sizing him up. “I have a…” his eyes narrowed like it pained him to say it, “proposal for you, human.”

Player shook his head. He felt himself straining, trying to hold it together.

The demon mistook the meaning behind the gesture. His half-smirk turned to a scowl. “You will listen to this. Do not try to run.”

Running was the last thing on Player’s mind. If he spoke what he thought aloud, that might help. “I told you,” he said, “you’ve destroyed everything. The town, my friendships, the little trust we all shared--”

“Give me the book back,” Herobrine said.

Player blinked. “What?”

“You still have the book. If I’m so awful, give me the book and I’ll find someone else to give it to besides you. The effect will be the same.”

The words popped out before Player could suppress them, “you wrote that it was for me alone.”

A shrug, “I can always modify it. If you won’t give it up willingly, I can take it from you by force.” There was no doubt in Player’s mind he could.

The human opened his inventory and retrieved the book. He looked down at it. The solution to the game, the Ending, right there in his hands. He did not want to give it up, but he would for the sake of getting rid of the demon. Wouldn’t he?

Player opened the book to the first page and reread it. “Not a monster at all,” he thought, and he broke. He was being unfair, and he knew it. Whatever Herobrine was, whoever he was, he had not known that it was Player’s life he was destroying when he attacked the village. That was overly dramatic anyway. Player’s life was not destroyed. He was still breathing. In fact, Herobrine had saved him twice now. He should be thanking the demon for that.

He closed the book and looked back up. Herobrine’s shoulders relaxed. There was a light in Player’s eyes he had been missing in their last encounter.

“I’m angry that you leveled that town,” the man said.

The demon’s mouth twitched up, but he made no reply.

Player let the moment linger for a little longer than was necessary, and then he relented. “What proposal?”

“Why do you think they’ll never trust you again?”

He laughed and looked down at himself, then back up at the demon. “They won’t let me get close enough to see my eyes,” he pointed out, “and if someone catches me talking to you? Forget it.”

“Everyone will do that?”

“Clarence, maybe, will hesitate, but like you said: they aren’t really killing me, are they?”

Herobrine nodded. “Why can’t you complete the game without them?”

Player waved the book in the air, “I’ll need a gladiator for this.”

The demon cocked his head, questioning.

“Ender pearls! I can’t take on a farmer, let alone an enderman. They’re worse than most of the people here.”

“You could if you tried.”

Player gaped at him for a moment, then shook his head. “Whatever.”

“You don’t have to do it without help anyway.” Herobrine sounded nervous. His body language was tense again.

The human all but threw his hands up. “Who would help me after all this? Who?!”

Herobrine didn’t say anything. Player looked at him for a few seconds. The questions had not been rhetorical. The demon gave an offended huff and turned away. He walked back into the trees.

Only then did the slow human brain, taxed by recent events, kick out an explanation. Player jolted with it. He ran forward a couple of steps. “Herobrine, wait! Hold on a minute!”

The figure stopped and looked back at him over one shoulder, white eye glaring with renewed disgust.

“I didn’t realize you were--” he took a moment to collect himself, “I’d be grateful to have your assistance if you’re willing to give it.”

“Yes, human, I thought that was obvious.” Herobrine turned back to him, but now he did not look half as irritated as he had before.

Player shuffled his feet, looking down. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see how you can really help with the first part. It’s kind of a one-person job.”

“The whole thing is a one-person job.”

“Maybe for you, but--”

“For you too, if you cared to try.”

The human brushed the words aside, “What I’m trying to say is I’ll get the obsidian on my own. That I can do.”

Herobrine smirked at him, “and how do you propose to do that?”

“All I have to do is find lava and water. You don’t have to hang around.”

“How will you make it to the cave?”

“I’ll walk,” Player was backing up now, eager to put some distance between himself and the unnatural man.

The grin broadened, “In the dark?”

Player looked around. There was a ring of mobs around them, packed together densely. There were open-mouthed creepers, skeletons posed with bows by their sides for once, zombies just holding their bodies together, spiders dancing between the legs of the other monsters. They were all silent, and they seemed to be watching. He swallowed, “M-maybe you should stay nearby.”

Herobrine chuckled, “There are certain benefits to my company, human.” He walked towards Player, but the human backed off. “You’re not totally comfortable in my presence I see.”

“You did level a town, and kill a man.”

“Yes, I did.”

Player heard an eager screech behind him. He had strayed too close to the edge of the circle. He wheeled around just in time to get hit in the chest with the coarse hairy body of an oncoming spider. He went down with a cry of panic, grappling with the many-legged monster. He put his arms over his face, protecting it from the jaws, receiving a painful nip on his forearm. 

He got a leg up beneath the spider and pushed with his knee, forcing it farther away from him, but its grip was strong. With a grunt of effort, he succeeded in removing its hold on him, and the spider flailed in the air for a moment. The human twisted and pinned it against the ground with the same knee that had pried it loose. 

Player snatched the pickaxe from his back, inverted it, and used the curved edge as a hammer. He cracked the exoskeleton on the first try, and the spider stopped struggling. Green goo oozed out of the cracks in the black skin.

Player looked up, still breathing hard. The tip of the shimmering diamond blade was only a few inches away from his face. Herobrine’s grip on the hilt of the sword was steady, and if he wanted to he could take the human’s head with one swing, but he wasn’t looking down at Player. He was glaring at the mobs in the circle that had rushed forward when the spider attacked, his face twisted into a look of such rage and hatred that they were actually backing away.

Player didn’t notice that. He was too busy watching the sword, making sure it didn’t come anywhere near him. The bite on his arm was swelling already and still bleeding. Herobrine seized him by it and hauled him onto his feet, and Player winced as the pressure increased. The sword was pointed at his neck now. The gleam of it was almost blinding.

“Mine,” Herobrine growled at the mobs around them, and even the zombies stepped back. “Understand? This one is mine.”

Player shivered. The demon was still gripping his arm, and even though the grip was painful it was nice to be touched by another person. “He’s a murderer,” he told himself, “a murderer and a griefer. And he’s someone who obviously wants to help me.” That last part hadn’t been in the script, and it caught him off guard. Herobrine squeezed his arm, and warmth shot up Player’s spine. It was an involuntary response. 

The ring of mobs dispersed. They all turned away and vanished into the forest as one, and after a few seconds, Herobrine and Player were the only two in sight. The demon held his sword up for a moment or two more, and then he lowered it. His body was partially behind Player now, and the warmth from it was distracting. It was making him forget every conviction he had gone into the encounter with.

Herobrine spoke a moment later, not moving at all, “You should go back into your cave until it’s light.”

Player shook his head a little.

“You can’t be expecting me to protect you until dawn,” that was spoken almost directly into his ear.

The human trembled for a moment, “No,” he said finally, forcing some sort of composure into his voice, “I can hold my own.”

“Disappointing,” Herobrine purred. His voice sounded a little shaky.

Player swallowed, “You can… I’d welcome the help--”

“Maybe I will,” Somehow he knew that he had said what the demon had wanted him to. Perhaps it was the way the body had moved a little closer to his.

And then Herobrine dropped his arm and stepped back, and Player was left light-headed with his stomach doing flips inside him and acutely aware of the night breeze on his skin. He turned and looked at the demon. His cheeks looked a little flushed, but perhaps that was a trick of the light.

Herobrine cleared his throat a little awkwardly like he realized he had pushed a little too far, “Where are you planning to go?”

Player didn’t reply. He stayed quiet. His misgivings were coming back, and it irritated him both because they were so easily suspended and because it indicated that his attraction to Herobrine was physical. The demon was almost a perfect duplicate of himself, and Player didn’t like the idea he was attracted to his own appearance.

Herobrine insisted in a more serious tone, “Where are you going, human?”

“Home,” Player said, and then “West across the valley. It’s just inside the mountains.”

The demon raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’ll be able to find it when I get close,” he insisted.

“Very well, West it is.” He turned on his heel and started walking towards the setting moon.

Player stood still, watching the familiar figure moving away from him. His torso had emptied of insects and now his chest ached for want of...something. His body was throwing him from emotion to emotion faster than he could process. He had entertained a certain amount of attraction towards Clarence, it was true, but that was an uncomplicated thing in comparison to this, and he had never really admitted it to himself before that moment. Herobrine made everything difficult.

“Are you coming, human?” Herobrine called to him, and Player hurried after him.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, the human a little ways behind the demon, watching him move. Herobrine walked like an animal, all shoulders and chest. Every step was like he was declaring his dominion over the world. Several times mobs approached out of the trees, but each time they drew back. The only time Herobrine reacted was when an enderman burbled nearby, and he moved a bit closer to Player, but even that may have not been anything at all.

Finally, the human could not keep silent. “What did you mean ‘this one is mine’?”

Herobrine glanced at him, disinterested. “Mobs don’t understand much beside ownership.”

“Oh.”

“They should leave you alone from now on.”

That wasn’t a bad thing, but Player wasn’t sure he liked being sheltered. “I can deal with mobs,” he said.

Herobrine said nothing, and soon he was regretting he had spoken at all.

They walked for a while more in silence, long enough for Player to forget about the embarrassment and start thinking about other things he wanted to ask. Then Herobrine glanced up and swung off the path. He chose a tall tree and climbed up into the branches with ease, twice kicking his legs up above his head to reach a tricky hold and then folding himself up backward. He vanished into the leaves.

Player stopped walking, unsure of what was happening. Had the demon simply lost interest in him? Was he already free of Herobrine’s company? He hoped not.

His head appeared over the edge of the tree. “Are you coming?”

Player started and then walked to the tree. It looked a lot taller from directly below the branches. He hesitated, waiting for Herobrine to check on him, and then realized that he would get no such thing from the demon. He took a breath and reached up. He had to jump to reach the first branch, and it creaked under his weight. His ascent was undignified and ungraceful, but he got there in the end. When his head finally broke through the top leaves, Herobrine offered him a hand to pull him up. Player took it without thinking, and the demon hauled him up onto the upper canopy.

He shook leaves out of his hair and brushed down his clothes. The bark had left brown dust on him in several places as he climbed.

Herobrine sat down on the edge of the tree, looking East towards the mountains. They still loomed above the valley from this angle, while those in the West were barely more than a squiggle on the horizon. The huge peaks were outlined in the faintest hint of orange.

Player sat down on the leaves a little behind Herobrine and crossed his legs. He looked at the still form, so similar in design to himself. The only movement from Herobrine was the movement of his hair as the wind passed through it. The same wind rustled in the leaves, making them rub against the denim of his jeans. Finally, he could not be silent any longer.

“Why are we up here?” He asked quietly, afraid to disturb the silence of the wind and Herobrine’s stillness.

“For this,” Herobrine replied, beckoning him forward.

Player slid forward until he was side-by-side with the demon, his legs dangling into the empty space beneath the tree. He glanced at Herobrine, but the man wasn’t looking at him. He was watching the mountains. The clouds of pale white around the peaks signaling snow glimmered gold in the orange halo. 

The human looked at it too, and he slowly began to understand, and just as he felt he was starting to get it, the sun broke over the tip of the tallest peak, and the warm yellow light instantly turned the valley from a bleached moon-shade of itself into the radiant shining place he remembered from that first glimpse a few days ago. The forest was bathed in gold. It dripped through the leaves onto the grass below. It danced on the water of the lakes and rivers. It spun through the air and warmed the skin of the two figures sitting side-by-side on the tree.

Player let out an involuntary gasp, but other than that he was silent. He could sense Herobrine did not want to de disturbed. Still, he remembered Clarence’s words when he first saw the valley, “See? Something here is wrong.” How could anything so beautiful be wrong?

He glanced at Herobrine, and for the first time caught a glimpse of the being contented. He wasn’t angry or nervous or expecting an attack. He was just watching the sunrise, the first time he had been able to in over seven months, and he wasn’t spoiling it by paying attention to the human by his side. Player felt the sudden urge to put an arm around the demon’s shoulders, but he couldn’t work up the courage to do so.

Finally, after the whole round sun had come over the mountains, Herobrine stirred. He stretched his arms over his head like he had been taking a nap and was waking up.

“Do you still have the strawberries?” Player asked. He was feeling a little hungry.

“I ate them.”

“You ate them?”

“It didn’t seem likely you were going to.”

That made sense. Of course it did, but Player gave an annoyed grunt anyway.

There was silence for a moment, and then Herobrine turned to him. He wasn’t smirking or frowning or sneering. He looked very calm. “Go ahead,” he said, “ask.”

He didn’t ask himself how the demon knew. “Why did you destroy the town?”

Herobrine looked down and frowned.

“And why did you kill everyone there? And Gaimon. Why did you kill Gaimon?”

“I thought you didn’t care about any of that.”

“I do care. I’m trying to make sense of it.”

“Of what?”

“Of this you,” he gestured at the valley, at the rising sun and the forest, “and that you, that did those things.”

“It’s the same me, human.”

“I know that!” Player took a breath, “Hero… Herobrine, please explain why you did those things.”

Herobrine looked down again. He shifted, and his hands bunched the leaves of the tree together absently. He gathered his thoughts. “I destroyed the village,” he started, “because they had stagnated. They were tearing the earth apart, and they had nothing to show for it but piles of food rotting in warehouses.”

Player leaned back a little in surprise.

“I attacked and despawned the players there because if I had not they would have gone on stagnating there forever,” he paused a moment. “I don’t know why I killed the boy. I wanted to stop him talking.”

“You… you killed someone and that’s all you have?! ‘I wanted to stop him talking’?”

A flash of white light from the narrowed eyes, anger for the first time in nearly half an hour. “What else do you want? Regret? Penance? Guilt?”

Player raised his hands and scooted back from the edge, afraid Herobrine would throw him off the tree if he got too mad. “Easy,” he said, “I didn’t mean--”

“Screaming bible verses at me sure communicates that well,”

“I’m sorry I did that,” was it really a bible verse? Technically yes: it was one of the ten commandments. It wasn’t a particularly odd thing to think of in that situation; it was common knowledge, but he could not remember ever having read it or heard it from anyone.

“People have been killed for less,” Herobrine said, “and are, at alarming rates.” A second’s pause, “That doesn’t make it good or right, but I don’t know what to do about it now.”

Player didn’t know what to say to that. He looked up at the mountains again, and that calmed him. The demon was taking this very well, he thought. He had anticipated a lot more resistance.

“I don’t even know if I killed him,” Herobrine went on, more softly. “I know I did something, but it was more like I set off a chain reaction than did the deed myself.”

Player shuddered a little. He spoke quickly, acting on the instinct before it could flee. “Can I tell you something?”

Herobrine looked at him, “Not if you’re going to guilt-trip me.”

“No, it’s not about that. It’s about 4980.”

“4980?”

Player shifted his weight to get comfortable, “Ya. There were originally four-thousand nine-hundred and eighty players in the game, and we all slept in that huge complex. We had one room each, and we were in numerical order. I’m the four-thousand nine-hundred and seventy-ninth player, so 4980 was right next to me.”

“You were neighbors?”

“I guess so. We didn’t talk much, but we got stuck together for a lot of stuff. He never turned his back on me and I never turned my back on him.” Player dug his nails into his palms to maintain control, “I never even learned his name, can you believe that? We spent months living beside one another and we never once exchanged names!”

Herobrine didn’t reply for a moment. He wasn’t sure where the human was going with this. When it was clear that Player wasn’t going to go on without prompting, he said, “What happened?”

The human shook his head. “We were both coming out of our rooms one morning. He passed me in the hall because I was walking slow. I didn’t feel good. I was nauseous. I said hello, and he gave me this curt little nod, the kind he always did, and he kept going for fifteen or twenty steps, and then he grabbed his chest and fell over.”

Player briefly reflected that this was what Clarence must have felt telling his story about the monster nearly killing him. It was painful, but it felt like a weight was lifting off him.

“I ran over,” he continued, his voice growing fainter so that Herobrine had to lean in to hear him, “by then he was all the way on the ground. I got him onto his side, and I realized that he wasn’t having a heart attack or a seizure or anything like that. He was suffocating. He couldn’t breathe. His mouth was moving and saliva was bubbling on his lips and he couldn’t get air into his lungs. I didn’t know until that day that it takes about five minutes to suffocate after your air is cut off. That’s how long it took for him to die, maybe a little longer.

“And before you ask, we tried everything we could think of. He cut him a new airway, we stuck our fingers down his throat looking for a blockage. A couple gladiators hauled him upside down and shook him. All that happened was he threw up, and that came up just fine. There was nothing wrong with his throat that we could find.” Player was choking now, eyes not closed against the tears but refusing to blink for fear of letting them roll down his face, “He died there in the hallway, covered in vomit and blood, struggling to breathe, holding my hand.” Finally, a sob broke loose, and he folded forward.

Herobrine started to reach towards him, but he remembered that Player did not like to be touched when he was in distress and drew back. He would wait, even though every ounce of common sense was screaming for him to comfort the human.

“It was stupid and senseless. He didn’t do anything to deserve it. It just happened, and there was nothing any of us could do.” Player sniffled, fought back the tears, “He didn’t say anything deserving of death. He couldn’t say anything in those last minutes. If someone like him can die without cause, I can believe that Gaimon deserved it. Maybe.”

He looked into Herobrine’s eyes. The face looking back was slack with quiet amazement. There was a tenderness in the demon’s face, not pity but empathy. He had lost someone too, Player could tell. Perhaps he had not been present for the event, forced to watch a friend take their last breaths right before him, but Herobrine knew what it was like for something that was constant to suddenly not be at all. Maybe he wasn’t ready to share his experience yet, but Player had no problem waiting.

He held out a hand, offering a handshake. “Thanks for listening.”

Herobrine took it, his warm palm pressed against Player’s, and then he seemed to decide something and pulled the human in close to him. He wrapped his free arm around the man’s shoulders and squeezed. Player stiffened at the unexpected contact, but he relaxed by degrees over the next few seconds. The demon was only mirroring what he had done for Clarence, after all. He had no real right to protest, and it felt good to be embraced. He dropped the demon’s hand and hugged back. Had he processed the fact that he was balling his fists in Herobrine’s shirt, he would have been embarrassed, but he was too caught up in the memory and the touch of warm skin to worry about little things like that.

Tears ran down his face, as silent as he could bear to make them. Herobrine didn’t stir except to put his other arm around Player’s shoulders too. The human could not see, but Herobrine was crying too, not for the nameless 4980, but for those who had left him alone. There were three. He missed them all deeply, but he had not noticed how much until Player’s story had reopened the old wounds and made him feel the loss again.

“Someone out there must be mourning like this for the boy I killed,” Herobrine realized. He understood then why Player was so furious at him. It was not fair to force this pain on someone else, not for any reason.

Player drew back from Herobrine, and the demon released him. The human turned away, wiped his eyes and took several deep breaths. He put a smile on and turned back to the demon. “Do you really want to come with me?”

Herobrine shrugged, “I can’t think of anything else I should be doing.”

Somehow Player understood that translated into a very positive, “yes.”

“Then we should get moving,” he said, standing up on top of the tree.

Herobrine, typically, dropped off the edge onto the ground, but Player wasn’t feeling very gymnastic just then, so he settled for scrambling down the branches and trunk again. The demon was watching him with intense interest when he reached the ground, and Player couldn’t help thinking that he was sizing up his abilities. The later chapters of the book he had been given indicated a need for combat, and he guessed that this was Herobrine’s primary concern.

“West it is,” the demon said, as soon as Player had reached him. He put his back towards the rising sun and started walking. The human kept pace beside him, his mind was empty of all but the catharsis of confession and the physical gratification of the embrace. The silence between them as they walked was a comfortable one.


	45. Puzzle Pieces

Ben wasn’t responding, and Janus didn’t know why. He had been present and responsive less than an hour ago, and now there was only silence. Perhaps he had left, but how could she tell? It wasn’t as if he was physically present in the room.

She stood up, bored of the waiting game, and stretched. She left the room. There was a group of technicians out in the hallways, talking in their quiet urgent way. She recognized one of the men from 4979’s room, tapping at the handheld he carried to monitor his charge’s status. He turned and walked quickly to his room and went inside. 

Janus followed the man to the door of the room, but he had closed and locked it behind him, and drawn the shade over the small window.

The remaining techs had clustered closer together and the tone of their conversation changed. She moved a little closer to them and took out her phone. It had no signal in the building, but it was still a good cover.

“Okay,” one of them was saying, “it’s not that hard. We can do it from any terminal with access to the game files, which is any terminal, pretty much. The mod is very simple. It’s a tiny file, and all it’s not dangerous to the players. All we have to do it load it up.”

“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” another muttered, “it doesn’t come with any extra mobs, true, but some of the subjects are under 18. We’re technically breaking the law by giving them firearms.”

The first speaker replied quickly, “Even if we are, we have to do something. They’re in there with a monster, we all know. My 2370 was in real trouble today. Her family told us she stress vomits, but she’s never done it here before. The guns are for their safety, to level the playing field.”

“It’s not machine guns anyway,” another commented, “Pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles that’s all.

Nothing on par with current military tech. There are no mods with that level of tech available for the version we’re running.”

“You guys are right…” the doubter conceded, “I just don’t like altering the game.”

“You’re vanilla all the way,” the first speaker clapped her companion on the shoulder, “and I respect you for it, but we need this.”

Vanilla nodded, “let’s do this.”

They each took a thumb drive from a proffered hand and dispersed.

Janus breathed a sigh of relief. She had been trying to solve the Herobrine problem for a while, but her interactions with Ben had been taking up too much time, and she feared letting her disinterest show would allow the strange being to devote more time and energy to monitor the game. It seemed that the issue was being resolved by other independent parties and that simplified things for her significantly.

Her phone beeped. It had unlocked itself and was displaying a plain black screen. Ben was back in the building.

“You should go to 4979’s room,” she read, “and prevent his family and friend from meeting.”

Knowing how insane she would look talking to a screen in her hand, Janus tapped the screen and brought up the keyboard. “Why is that important?”

“He will not be allowed to remain here if his mother is displeased, and he is all that is keeping Herobrine under control.”

That, she had to concede, made some sense.

The door to the room was only a little ways away, but it was closed and probably locked. Those particular technicians were very protective. She spotted the boy’s mother coming down the hall, even though it was not visiting day. The ordinary occupants of the facility tended to stay out of her path.

Janus could not understand what made them do it. She was not a physically impressive woman; she was smallish and very thin. Her thin graying hair was drawn up into a bun that gave her already pale face a pinched unhealthy expressions. And she gave off the distinct impression of not being very intelligent. Perhaps it was the way her eyes shone that cowed people.

She adjusted her face into a mask of placid indifference, as she had been taught, and stepped out to block the woman’s path. She practically towered over her, such was their difference in stature. Janus found herself doubting that this woman was 4979’s biological mother. Surely the man in the pod could not be related to this wizened little woman.

The woman paused, looking down at Janus’s feet. She tilted her head up slowly, scanning up from the sensible athletic shoes, across the casual pants with deep pockets and confining blouse, to the dark face. A look of hatred flitted across her face that was so intense that the doctor nearly stepped out of her way. Instead, she found deep reserves of calm and drew upon them, making her face a mask of serenity.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said, “I need to ask you your business.”

“I’m here to see my son,” the voice was meant to slice cleanly through all resistance, but it earned no reaction from Janus.

“You cannot enter any of the private rooms except on visiting days,” she informed the older woman.

“I was assured that I would be allowed in,” 

“I’m sorry, but you were misinformed. May I escort you out of the building?”

She flinched away from the offered arm, a hand going to her throat and clutching at something. Janus didn’t see it, but she guessed it was a crucifix. That was what people tended to grab for.

“I demand to see my son,” the woman snarled.

Janus heard a door open and close behind her, turned her head a fraction and saw Adam walking down the hall in the other direction, looking down at his notes as he moved away. He had switched out his skinny jeans and t-shirts for button-downs and slacks in the past few weeks. Except for the piercings, he looked just like any other technician, but you could not see them from the front.

“Ma’am,” she said stiffly, “you should not have come here without an appointment,”

“I was assured that I would be able to see my son whenever I wanted to.”

“You cannot. Family visits are restricted to specific days to make it easier on us. Your son is undergoing therapies to assist in his recovery. Interrupting may affect the outcomes negatively. I’ll escort you to the exit.”

“I’ll be taking this up with management,” She sniffed.

“You’re welcome to.” Janus took her by the arm and lead her back to the front door. She took care not to grip tightly and only to guide her steps. She opened the door for the woman and made sure she left the vicinity of the building. No sooner had she turned around than her phone buzzed.

“We’ve got a problem,” Ben wrote. The message was scribbly as if someone had actually been handwritten.

“What?” Janus typed back.

“Well: two problems. The first being that I’m going to have to rewrite legislation and possibly submit several grossly exaggerated claims to Child Protective Services in the near future to keep all the subjects in this program. But that’s my problem, not yours.”

Janus just frowned at her phone.

“The second is that Herobrine may not be doing his job. Or he may be doing it too slowly, so it’ll be all but useless in the end.”

“That’s not a problem. It’s a blessing.”

“And I caught that mod they’re installing. I saw it get loaded in. That’s actually what I was going to do. It’s the perfect catalyst to get things rolling again.”

She glanced up through the window. The little lady was climbing into a silver sedan waiting in the parking lot. It drove away. Janus turned and walked back down the hallway to the room.

“Why isn’t he doing his job?” She asked once the door was closed.

“I underestimated his romantic tendencies. It’s my fault. I’m the one who fed him Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and then isolated him. 4979 has a way of bringing out that side of him it seems.”

“Romantic?”

“As in the artistic movement. What he’s feeling for 4979 could be anything from curiosity to affection. I can’t tell just by the glimpses I get.”

Janus felt her cheeks heat up a little. She shivered at the thought.

“You don’t think it’s cute?” Ben asked. “Well, you wouldn’t. You picture sulfur, smoke, and hellfire when it comes to Herobrine. It’s not inaccurate, just a little two-dimensional.

“When I first looked at you, what I immediately see is someone who wants to lock me in a little concrete box and throw it into a volcano. Then I remind myself that I played board games with you when you were four and I beat that impression back. Learn how to do that.”

Janus started as if struck, “What do you mean you played board games with me?” She demanded.

“Will you  _ please _ read your mother’s notes. I’ll be back after I commit treason.” And he was gone. Again. This time for the foreseeable future.


	46. Misunderstood

From the Secret Notes of Ana Dane. Dated August 8, 2027

Today is Janus’s fifth birthday. It’s the first time I’ve taken her shopping on her own. She was so excited, bouncing down the aisles, asking me for everything from stuffed animals to jewelry to cocktail dresses from the women’s section that were much too large for her. Doubtless, you are confused. Who is Janus? As of last you remember, I have no daughter.

To answer that, I must confess to many things. Some of them are enough to get me fired. You will have to believe me when I say that there was no keeping them away from the child. Siren was beside me the moment Janus came into the world, and her presence then was a blessing. My incompetence then was obvious, and from that moment on I was never without a guardian.

When I got home the next day, I found the room I had painted blue has been turned pale-pink overnight, and there were two child-shaped things begging to see their little sister.

“Siren named her Janus,” they told me, and then they argued over who was going to be Janus’s older sister and who was going to be stuck in the middle.

I asked Siren about it later. She remained with me for nearly a month, making sure both Janus and I were healthy and safe. She insisted the child’s name was Janus, and would not budge an inch on the subject.

Janus. The two-faced god who looks to past and future, guardian of doors, passages, and endings. It was a name of duality. Why they named her so was such a mystery to me.

She grew to be intelligent. Almost too intelligent. Ben taught her to play chess at three, and I did not have to lose to her on purpose. When she was four, he was teaching her coding. She was drawing diagrams of the human brain a month ago, with a very pleased teacher watching her. She told me in detail what an enlarged amygdala does to the human psyche, and understood every word she told me. I could barely comprehend her conversation today as she spoke about the light from the sun and how the artificial lights made the clothing appear different colors inside than outside. Such intelligence is a gift and a curse. I wanted a normal child, who would live a normal life. That is not what I have been given.

Why am I writing all this now? Today was the first time I took Janus shopping. I let her choose her own birthday present. She chose two things: a makeup kit and a yellow sundress. I suppose I should not be so surprised. I doubt I will ever know how the monsters knew so early on, but it is very obvious to me. I have a daughter.

* * *

Player stopped walking when his vision started blurring out. He sat down in the soft green grass and dug into his pack for the last of his water, but the bottle only held a few drops stuck to the bottom that wouldn’t even roll out when he turned it upside down.

Herobrine finally noticed he wasn’t there and returned, peering curiously at him through the trees between them.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“Taking a break,” Player said, long pauses between the words for breaths. “It’s hot out here.”

“It’s not that bad, human.”

“We’ve been walking for hours,” he glanced up. The sun was already half-gone behind the trees. They had been hiking since dawn, and all this time Herobrine had shown no signs of fatigue or even discomfort. He was able to draw on nearly endless reserves. Player, on the other hand, was running on fumes. He hadn’t slept properly in several days and he had no food since the previous evening, and that had only been fruit.

Herobrine did not seem to be getting his meaning. He was frowning.

“I need to rest,” Player told him slowly.

His face cleared. The man hunkered down a few feet away, not sitting all the way down. He plucked a blade of grass and shredded it while Player watched, still breathing a little heavily from prolonged exertion.

“Are you done resting yet?” Herobrine asked.

“No,” He was emptying his bag onto the ground, searching for last scraps of food, but he already knew there was nothing. His stomach was turning inside out with hunger. This was real hunger, not the peckishness that arrives after a few hours without a snack. That faded away after half an hour; this had persisted for three or more hours now, and it was only getting worse. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked Herobine.

The demon frowned again, “No. Are you?”

“Starving,” He opened his inventory. There was nothing but a few seeds. Player swallowed, and then dared to ask, “If I kill a chicken, are you going to use a flock to peck me to death?”

The look that earned him was intense, “Not if you eat it.”

“Okay,” Player hauled himself to sore feet and walked back down the path they had just followed. There was a little flock of chickens behind off the path, and he held out the seed to them, crouching down so they could reach it easily.

A plump hen eyed the seed in his hand and hopped a little closer. She pecked questioningly at a finger, but Player clenched his teeth against the ticklish prick and didn’t move. She bobbed her head up and started picking out the best bits of seed.

He steeled himself, and then his other hand shot out and seized her around the neck. The hen screeched and flapped madly. She wriggled and squirmed. Player threw aside the seed, stood, and gave one violent shake of his hand. Her neck snapped, and the little feathered body went limp.

Even as he was walking back, he plucked her feathers, leaving a downy white trail behind him. Some of them stuck to his fingers. Normally he left the slaughtering to someone else. It made him feel bad to kill animals, but he had no choice right now, and he needed something besides fruit in his stomach.

Herobrine had vanished when he got back to where they had stopped, but right then he was too tired to care or wonder. He cleared a place on the ground clear of sticks and twigs and opened his inventory to retrieve his crafting table. He put the chicken on top of it and finished plucking it.

There was a stir behind him, and without even looking he knew Herobrine had returned. The chill that swept over him was unmistakable. The demon didn’t speak, but he was watching, Player.

He had no knife and nothing to make one with, so the chicken kept its guts and head. It was distasteful, but it was the only option. There was a thunk, and when Player looked around a knife quivered in the tree beside him. He glanced back, but again Herobrine had vanished.

“Um, thanks,” he said, and worked the blade out of the bark. It was honed to an edge that cut through bone with the slightest touch, as Player discovered when he pressed down hard on the neck of the bird only to have the knife leave a deep groove in the wooden surface beneath the meat. He had forgotten, too, about the blood. It spilled out of the severed neck and filled all the little divots on the table, leaving stains that he would never be able to clean up completely. It left red on the hand that held the knife, deep burgundy red, almost like wine.

“Well that’s appropriate,” he thought, flicking as much of it off as he could. He picked up the carcass by its feet and held it upside down over the grass as most of the blood left it. He tilted up the crafting table to drain it as well. When most of the blood was gone he set the carcass back down and set about gutting it, narrowing his eyes in concentration as he worked.

What Player had never been told, indeed what most people are not told at all, is that organs do not simply fall out of an open body. Overstuffed intestines may bulge out, yes. Lengths may even slip out of large gashes, but to actually remove entire organs is entirely different. The membranes that keep the organs in place are remarkably strong despite their transparency, and often it takes a long time, especially in dim lighting, to cut clean through them. All in all, it’s not a job for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

Player was used to gutting animals. Sort of. He had done it before. He knew how. This time it went over smoothly, which he put down to having such a sharp knife. He scooped out all the guts in one movement and put the still-warm body aside from a little as he stepped away.

He opened his inventory again. He had no stone. Player heaved a sigh of annoyance. He started gathering wood together to make a fire.

He built it up quickly, clearing a patch of ground as best he could to hold the fire, and then carefully skewered the chicken and suspended it over the flames. It would take a long time to cook that way, but it was better than eating it raw. Player swept the chicken guts into a spare square of leather and carried it into the woods.

That done, he turned his attention to water. He had not seen water for a long time before reaching this spot, and it was making him worried. Water was more important than food, after all.

When he got back to the clearing, Herobrine was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire. He had his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees. He looked at Player when he emerged from the trees, then back to the fire. Beside him was a bucket of water. Player knelt and rubbed the rest of the blood off his hands in the grass.

“Is that water for me?” He asked as he stood.

Herobrine gave a little shrug, not looking at him. Player filled his water bottle from the bucket and drank it all in one go. Then he looked at the man again.

“You okay?” He asked.

Herobrine didn’t even glance up, “I’m thinking.”

Player sat down across from him and turned the chicken on the spit. He drank another bottle of water, more slowly this time. His eyes were starting to get heavy. He yawned expansively.

“You’re that tired?” The question surprised Player.

He nodded, eyes still squeezed closed against the yawn. He rubbed the water out of his eyes and looked back at Herobrine. 

The demon was looking at him, something approaching wonder in his face.

“What?” He asked.

That got him another shrug. Herobrine still looked troubled.

“Look,” Player said, “if you don’t want to be here, you can go. I can find somewhere safe to sleep tonight.”

Finally a response. The white eyes narrowed to glare at him, “Do you want me gone that bad?”

“No,” Player backpedaled, “you look unhappy, that’s all.”

Herobrine grinned. He bent one knee up and rested his head on it. “Too self-conscious for your own good.”

Player was glad the light from the fire was already red to hide his embarrassment. He reached out and rotated the chicken again.

“You’ve given up this fight easily,” Herobrine told him.

“What fight?” He took another swig of water.

“The one where you scold for leveling a town and killing someone,”

Player choked. He covered his mouth and coughed to the side as the water cleared his windpipe. “I didn’t know that was a fight.”

“Everything is a fight.” Herobrine shifted, “Humans usually fight hard against those they perceive as a threat. So unless you’re accustomed to violence, I see no reason why you should be so calm about me.”

Player thought about this for a moment. He opened his inventory and was extremely chagrined when he discovered the stack of walnuts that he had collected the day before right where he left them. He closed it again. “We’ve been attacking each other for a long time,” He said finally, “the other players and I. Survival Games, PVP minigames, fights over land.”

“But it’s not the same as what I do, is it?”

“No. Definitely not, but it’s not too scary.”

“That’s what I mean. Any normal human would be terrified after even a glimpse of me. You must have seen some crazy shit in your life to be dismissing my actions like this.”

“I don’t know what it could be.” Not that he remembered anything from before the game anyway. He never had, and he didn’t plan to.

There was silence for a few minutes.

“You prefer me yelling?” Player asked. He succeeded in burning his fingertips in the fire as he moved the spit around and put them in his mouth. He sucked on them hard.

“No,” Herobrine grumbled a little. He looked at the chicken. “Are you going to eat all of that?”

“Probably not,” Player admitted. He cast the demon an uncertain glance, unsure whether or not this would constitute a punishable offense.

“Mind sharing?”

He was surprised and then he felt stupid. Of course Herobrine was hungry. He must be just as hungry as Player was, maybe more. He didn’t know what or when the demon had last eaten. “Of course, but it’s going to take a while to be ready.”

“I can wait.”

They waited for about half an hour more. Neither spoke again. By the time the chicken was cooked, it was fully dark outside and Player was practically falling asleep sitting up. He really was exhausted. He had been a relatively easy life before, compared to this.

Finally, the food was done. Player used the knife to cut off a leg and dug in greedily. A little voice in the back of his head told him that he should eat some vegetables, but he the energy to go scavenging. He felt another yawn coming on and swallowed hard to avoid having food in his mouth when it hit.

Herobrine had not reached for the food yet. He was watching Player over the fire. The human had thought he was safe from observation in the dark, but he did not know about the demon’s night vision.

Player forgot entirely about him as he ate. He demolished half of the chicken in less than half an hour.

“Human,” Herobrine thought, “inconveniently human. I must be more careful. What do I know about being human?”

“You should go to bed,” He said to aloud.

The human looked up at him. His eyes were half-closed and for a moment they flashed violet, a creature that had crawled back from the End of the world. Then he blinked and the illusion was gone.

“Really?” he said, “I can wait up a while longer.”

Herobrine growled, “Sleep. I am trying to be considerate.”

Player licked grease off his fingers and threw the bones into the fire. “If you’re--” he yawned again, “if you’re sure.”

Herobrine made no reply, just shrugged.

Player gave it a minute more, and then he gave up and crawled into his sleeping bag. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting almost immediately. Something was missing though. He felt exposed.

The distant sound of a zombie reminded him, and he sat upright. He was right out in the open. He had no protection against the mobs.

Player got back to his feet and started to gather up his things. He just had to get up a tree or dig himself a hole.

“What are you doing?”

He jumped a little. He had forgotten that Herobrine was here. “Moving somewhere safe,” he said.

“Don’t worry. They won’t touch you.”

“Right,” Player kept gathering things up. “I’ll be up a tree.” He scrambled up onto a branch and tied himself in place with a length of rope around both him and the sleeping bag. He rarely moved in his sleep, but it made him feel safer. He crawled into the bag and fell asleep at once.

Herobrine threw a stone into the fire. “He doesn’t trust me,” he thought, and then “Of course he doesn’t. I wouldn’t trust me either.” He sighed and said a word. The fire went out, plunging the world into darkness.


	47. New Skills

“Something up with 2069?”

“He’s stressed, they say. He was in the village that got leveled, after all.”

“Do you think he knows what he’s doing?”

“I don’t think any of them do. Only about a fourth of them have any experience with combat and even less are good at it.”

“And none of them will be able to match Herobrine, is that it?”

“None of them will have a chance, not in a million years.”

“I suppose that’s what the guns are for if they figure out how to make them.”

* * *

Herobrine returned to the camp after dawn broke. He had considered waking Player to watch the sunrise with him again but had decided against it. The human needed sleep, obviously, and dragging him out of bed at all hours was not going to help him. 

The ashes of the fire were cold and scattered by the wind. Player’s pack was on the ground where he had left it. The man himself was still up the tree, tied to his branch, sound asleep. He appeared not to have moved at all. The base of the tree was scarred where mobs had attempted to climb it. Player had been right to take precautions. 

Herobrine felt a touch guilty about leaving all night, but seeing that the human had not woken up, he felt better. He climbed into the tree and sat on the next branch over. The sleeping human was facing away from him. His chest rose and fell a little unevenly. The demon reached out a hand and shook Player’s shoulder.

The human jerked and sat up. He looked around, saw Herobrine, and would have fallen out of the tree if he hadn’t been tied on. Then his body relaxed.

“Morning,” he said sleepily, reaching up to rub one of his violet-blue eyes. 

Herobrine’s stomach dropped. Instead of replying he allowed himself to slide backward off the branch and swung himself to the ground. He heard Player sigh in annoyance.

While the human made his own ponderous way to the ground, Herobrine wandered into the forest. He needed a couple of good sticks. 

When he came back, Player was drinking out of the bucket of water. He filled his bottle again and capped it, tucked it away. The human looked over his shoulder. “I said good morning.”

Herobrine held out one of the two sticks, tapped the air with it.

Player took it. “What’s this for?”

“You said you needed a gladiator.” 

He sighed, “What does this--” he swished the stick through the air and got the answer to his unfinished question. Herobrine stopped the movement with the other stick. The crack of the contact jolted into Player’s arm. He dropped the length of wood and backed away. 

Herobrine scowled. He had been looking forward to a little sparring.

“No, no, no,” Player said, “I meant a need a gladiator to help me, not this.”

“This will be easier,”

“I don’t think this is a good idea…” he trailed off, unable to think of an actual argument but knowing, with all the conviction he had, that learning to fight was not a good thing. “I shouldn’t fight.”

“You handle a bow pretty well,” Herobrine pointed out.

Player faltered. “I’m just not very good with a sword,” he admitted after several seconds. “Can we just start walking?”

Herobrine did not reply. He sighed through his nose and sat down to wait. After a minute, Player sat too, not facing him, looking towards the remains of the fire.

“How is it,” the demon thought, “that he’s the troubled one here? By all rights, I should be the one struggling against myself, and yet…” there was no point finishing the thought. He knew why he was stable. He had had support, friends, people he could identify with. They had helped him build up his strength.

Player leaned forward and started rebuilding the fire. He piled on fresh fuel and used a worn flint and steel to generate a spark. The flame caught and grew. Herobrine snatched the stick he had brought from the ground just as the human reached for it. He placed it beside him with its partner.

“Sorry I shot you,” Player said, “I didn’t even think about your shoulder.”

Herobrine blinked. He hadn’t even remembered that. He shook his head, pulled up his knee and put his chin on it.

“Is it okay?”

Herobrine spun around and pulled down his collar to expose the place the arrow had penetrated. Not so much as a scar remained. He sensed Player looking at him and shivered.

“That’s a neat trick,” he said.

Herobrine shrugged and turned back around. Player looked deliberately back at the fire. Then his face paled and he stood up, stamping on the first flames to extinguish them.

“Clarence,” he said, and snagged his bag, “I totally forgot about him.”

Herobrine stood up too. He watched player roll up his sleeping bag and put it away. “Human,” he said.

Player stopped with his inventory still open and looked at him through it.

“What are you planning to do?”

He closed the panel, “I’m going to go and find him.”

“By walking another two days and following his trail from there.”

Hesitation, “I can’t just leave him by himself. He’s not strong.”

Herobrine narrowed his eyes. Such a lack of faith in his “friend.” He had changed his judgment of Player, but maybe he had been right the first time after all.

The human just looked at him for a second, and then his shoulders slumped, “Not that my finding him will help him get stronger. He’s very reliant on me.” There was bitterness in his tone. 

“So are you going to walk two days or more to find someone who ran away from you while you were dying?”

“That’s not what happened,” Player defended.

Herobrine raised an eyebrow.

“I came back to save him, and once he was out of the way I…” he trailed off. He’d been about to say, “I went back to save the others,” but had he really?

“Once he was ‘out of the way?’ Such demeaning language.”

Guilt roiled in Player’s gut, and he found himself pushing it out as anger at Herobrine. “Like you’re any better! Saving my life was ‘a favor,’ twice now you’ve saved me. Does that mean I owe you? Or does almost getting me killed in the first place excuse me from the debt?”

An eerie grin spread over the demon’s face. There was the fire! He’d known it was there somewhere.

“Almost killed me yourself,” The human went on, “with your own hands! And you did kill someone else. You are drenched in blood!”

“A normal state of affairs,” Herobrine bent down and retrieved the sticks from the ground. “At least I accept it.”

“What, and I don’t? Didn’t you give me a speech about being accustomed to violence?” Player seized the proffered stick without thinking and gripped it with both hands. He let his pack slide to the ground beside him.

“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.”

“Me?”

“What are you then? I’m drenched in blood like you say. I’m Herobrine. Who are you?”

Instead of replying, Player took a swing at him. The stick whizzed by, and Herobrine was so surprised he dodged instead of blocking. The stick made an audible swishing sound as it went by.

“Did I hit a nerve?” Herobrine asked, and blocked a second attack that would have broken his cheekbone if it had been allowed to land. The blow itself was impressive, but Player spoiled it by leaving himself wide open to attack. The demon resisted the instinct to slam a kick into his side and merely tapped him on the arm with the stick.

Player surged with anger, but he could not have said why he was angry. He changed tactics and jabbed the stick at Herobrine’s chest, felt more than saw the block that sent him off balance, and then came another tap, barely hard enough to bruise, this time on his side. The new skin there twinged and his ribs gave a little scream in protest. It wasn’t much pain, but it jolted him.

He stepped away from Herobrine, dropping one of his hands to cover the bruised area. The demon’s stick whipped through the air towards his other side, and he moved in to block it. Again the jolt of contact, and the instinct to drop the weapon. This time he held onto it and slashed back in retaliation.

Herobrine met the strike and pushed back until they were at equilibrium, neither gaining or losing ground. He was grinning.

“You’re mad because I’m right,” He said, almost sang.

Player shivered. He grunted as he pushed forward against Herobrine and actually slid backwards a couple of inches as the demon shoved back. His eyes widened.

It sank in what he was doing, what he was trying to do, and Player disengaged from the fight. He stepped back, dropped the stick, then took several more steps away. Herobrine’s grin faded.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” he said to Player, trying to make his voice soothing.

“I know. I’d be dead already if you were taking it seriously,” Player squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep breath, and he was back to normal. He opened his eyes and bent down for his bag.

Herobrine cracked him across the back of his head. Player yelped and shot back upright. He glared, reaching up to feel his head where the blow had landed. 

“What was that for?!”

“Being a coward.”

Player stopped rubbing his head. “And what,” he snapped, “makes me a coward?”

“Running from a fight,”

“I’m not running from a fight. I’m running from a slaughter! There’s a difference.”

“I’m not talking about me, human.”

“Seems you never are,” He groaned. “Then what do you mean?”

“I mean the book, the game. The point of this world’s existence is to beat the game, and yet you ignore it. You keep making excuses.”

“Excuses?” Player gaped.

Herobrine took a deep breath. He tried to remember the last time he had made a speech like he was about to. There were two other times he had done so. One, like this, had been about the game. The other time had been more personal in nature, and he did not care to dwell on it.

“You need a gladiator,” he started, “yet thousands have beaten this game performing the bare minimum of combat. Your bow will serve you better than a sword in all but two instances. That’s excuse number one.”

“What do you mean thousands--”

“You need help, you claim, and yet you’ve made your way here and back several times, fought a wither skeleton, and doubtless faced many of the enhanced mobs in this area alone.”

Player nodded grudgingly.

“You need some confidence, human, but it’s understandable. The thing I don’t understand is why you are bringing this person, Clarence, into it. If he isn’t helping you, and if you aren’t helping him, what’s the point?”

“I am helping him,” He rubbed his head again, “that’s what the relationship is built on at this point. That really hurt, you know.”

Herobrine rapped him again, more gently this time but still hard enough to sting. Player glared. 

“I’m worried about him,” Player said, “Ivy and Bit I saw die, but the last I saw of Clarence he was throwing a rock at the back of your head.”

“I didn’t touch him.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much. People often have surprising strength.”

“If I knew he was okay, I’d feel better.”

Herobrine tilted his head, “I could check if he’s dead. If he’s not, he’s somewhere safe by now.”

“You can do that?” Player asked. The hope in his voice stung a little. 

Herobrine nodded.

“Will you, please?”

“Of course.” Herobrine turned and went to a tree. He placed his hand on the bark and focused, felt the portal form less than a centimeter above the block. He turned back briefly to look at Player. “Stay here. This won’t take long.” He got a nod in return and stepped through the portal. To the human, it appeared that he had passed into the solid tree. 

Player leaped after him almost immediately, but the portal was already closing. All that remained when his hand met the bark of the tree were a few stray purple particles that the man stared at until they vanished. He backed away from the tree, knocking against something with his heel. It was the stick. Player picked it up and gave it a meditative stare.

Herobrine arrived at the fortress to find the players in the cages chattering to each other. They all fell silent as he approached.

The tall red-haired woodsman opened his eyes and saw him, gave a cheery little wave. “Back again already?”

Herobrine walked to the edge of the walkway and put a foot on top of the fence. He spread his arms for balance and stood up, other foot behind him. Once he felt stable, he put it down on the fence as well and then he was standing on the very edge of the walkway, over the lava far beneath. He saw the eyes of the players around him widen in panic. They thought he was going to jump into the lava. He did jump, but not out over the lake of lava. He caught the bars of the cage in front of him and climbed up onto the top of it. From here he had a good view of the cages farther back from the pathway, and he scanned them.

He thought about the boy, Clarence, tried to form a picture in his mind. He could remember things: large eyes, a round face, mousy hair. Was that right? It must be. He looked for those things. Since every player in the cells was looking at him, it was not hard.

His eyes locked onto one individual, and he took a running start and leaped from the cage he perched on to another and then another. He landed, with a shock that made the chain creak, on the top of the cage. He looked inside, stomach flat on the hot netherrack, the front half of his body over the edge. It wasn’t Clarence though, not as he pictured him. This man’s whole face was a squished together.

Just to be sure, he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Vorian,” the man squeaked, and then went on in a panicked voice as Herobrine’s eyes narrowed, “it is, it is, I swear! I’m already dead for god’s sake, why would I lie?!”

Herobrine shimmied backward and pulled himself up onto the cage again. He brushed himself off, stood back up, and made his way back to the walkway.

He repeated the process on the other side of the path, but Clarence wasn’t there either. In fact, there were very few who even came close to matching his appearance. The large liquid eyes were hard to find.

Herobrine jumped back onto the solid netherrack of the walkway and spared a moment to stretch. He heard the players around him stir, but they were not inclined to chat while he was present.

The red-headed man had stood up. He was leaning on the bars, real concern in his eyes. Herobrine looked at him and waited.

“What are you looking for?” He asked.

Herobrine didn’t respond. He stared hard at Player, his eyes flashing bright.

“Can’t you talk?”

“I can,” Herobrine responded. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Did you find them?”

He shook his head, “Better that way.”

“Guess so. Means they’re not dead.”

Herobrine nodded and turned to go. The man didn’t have much longer in the nether. He probably wouldn’t be here the next time Herobrine visited.

He turned back for just a moment, considered saying goodbye, and decided against it. He had a human to get back to.

Herobrine stepped out of the portal, back into the forest. He took care not to emerge from the exact place he had disappeared from, so the smell of sulfur could dissipate. He walked for a couple minutes back to the clearing and found Player waiting. He was leaning against the tree looking very worried. He was turning the stick between his hands.

“He’s alive,” Herobrine said as he came out of the trees.

Player jumped upright, relief spreading across his face as he saw the man. Then a different sort of relief as he processed what had been said. “Thank you,” he said, “that makes me feel much better.”

He just grunted in response. The uncomfortable fluttering feeling was starting in his stomach. It was very distracting.

“So…” Player’s voice trailed off, and then he steeled himself and said, “I think you’re right. Learning how to fight would be easier than trying to convince a gladiator to come with me.”

Herobrine bit back what he wanted to say, “I’m right here, human.” Instead, he smirked and nodded.

“Like I said: they won’t let me get close enough to see my eyes,”

“Very well. It’s not difficult. You’ll pick it up quickly.” He walked forward until the distance between them was only a few feet and took the length of wood Player offered him. 

Herobrine made himself focus on the task ahead of him and not to think about Player as. He ignored the little shocks of electricity that traveled through his simulated body at even the suggestion of a touch.

“Ready?” Herobrine asked.

Player looked like he regretted his decision, but he raised the stick.

The demon sighed. He walked to Player, circled around him. The human was rigid in anxiety, but he couldn’t do anything about that.

“Bend your knees a little,” he instructed, “not that much. Good.”

The human glanced at him, still tense.

Herobrine paced back in front of him, held the stick vertically in front of him. “Hit me.”

Player hesitated a moment, then he swung horizontally, twisting his shoulders into the motion. The blow made a satisfying noise as it connected, but his body stopped with a jerk and he stumbled.

“Again,” Herobrine said, turning to face him.

Player hit him again, and this time he took a step forward into the blow. He didn’t stumble. He was catching on quickly.

“Use your hips,” it was all he needed to say, on the next swing Player put his whole body into it, stepping and twisting hard. He bounced back easily, didn’t lock his knees or jam his feet into the ground.

“Good,” Herobrine said, “feel how lightly you moved?”

Player nodded. He looked satisfied with himself. Clarence was the farthest thing from his mind right then. There was no worry at all in his face.

Herobrine decided to fix the moment of hesitation later. It would be easier once the man had built up some confidence.


	48. Obscuring Influences

“I’m back, what did I miss?”

“Our boy is still under. Way under.”

“That’s good, right?”

“It is. It means muscle micromovements are still happening. But when I say he’s way under, I mean I’m nervous that he’s so far under. I’m not even sure he’s even using his sense of smell anymore. It’s like the game is reverting back to its original state in his mind.”

“I don’t know why he would do that.”

“He’s not. It must be some other influence in his area.”

“If he goes too far down, what then?”

“Then we hope, I suppose, and hope the family doesn’t pull the plug.”

* * *

Once again, Player was tired, but now he was sore as well. Sparring with Herobrine was a workout like he had never experienced before. Player was fit; he was used to physical labor, but mining was repetitive and simple. This was anything but repetitive. Even when he made the same move three or four times in a row, each instance was different than the last. Different muscles, different momentum, different everything.

He gave one final swing and nearly overbalanced. His sides and back were burning. His lower legs were on fire. He stopped, bent double, breathing hard.

Herobrine let his stick drop to his side. It was scratched along its length where he had blocked Player’s attacks, though to call them attacks was generous. “That’s enough for now,” he decided. His voice rumbled like thunder.

“About time,” The man panted. His stomach growled hungrily. He had had no breakfast and it was almost noon. He stumbled to his feet--his legs rebelled against him--and went to the water bucket. It was nearly empty, and what was left was brackish and stale, but he drank anyway.

“Hungry?” Herobrine asked him. It was the only thing he could think of to say.

“Starving,” he opened his inventory and retrieved the walnuts. Their outer shells were tough. They needed to be cracked under force, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to muster it.

There was a hand on his shoulder, and Herobrine offered him a package. It was wrapped in the same piece of plaid cloth the strawberries had been in before the man had eaten them. This time Player took the package and opened it. 

It was the chicken from the previous night, still warm because it had been preserved in Herobrine’s inventory.

“Do you want any?” Player asked, “you said you wanted it.”

Herobrine shrugged, “I ate a little.” One of the legs was missing.

Player tore off a piece of meat with his fingers. It was much better than the walnuts would have been, and it was a lot easier to eat. He shifted until he was cross-legged and put the bundle in his lap.

Herobrine sat on the ground across from him and rested his chin in one hand. Player took a good look at him. There was a faint trace of sweat around his collar. He looked down at himself and saw that his own sweat had soaked into his shirt around his arms and neck.

Instantly he felt himself flush, and his appetite deserted him. He swallowed the chicken that was already in his mouth--it tasted like sand--and wrapped the bundle back up.

“Thanks anyway,” he muttered, pushing it towards Herobrine.

The man looked at him, stared at him. Player wanted to disappear. He couldn’t stop thinking about how it must look for him to be sitting there, covered in sweat. He must be starting to smell too. He needed a bath, but there was no water nearby and the bucket was empty. He plucked at his shirt and realized too late he had grease on his fingers, and now there would be a grease stain on his shirt too until he could wash it. He had been eating with his hands too, completely undignified. He must look like a barbarian, eating with his hands and soaked through with sweat. If only he didn’t care what Herobrine thought it would be so much easier, but he did care. He cared and he must look like such a slob right now and--

“You should eat,” Herobrine said.

Player blinked, his destructive train of thought derailing. He met the man’s eyes or at least thought he did. The spark of connection was definitely there.

“If you’re trying to lose weight,” the man went on, “you have nothing to lose except muscle, and you need that. Eat, and next time we spar, it won’t take so much out of you.”

“I lost my appetite,” Player said.

“Just like that?”

He nodded.

“Must have been a horrible thought to do that, right after three-hours of activity.”

“We were fighting for three hours?” It had felt like much less time.

“About that. Eating now will help you recover.”

Player picked the fabric up, started picking at the chicken. “What about you?” he asked, “don’t you need to eat too?”

“Not right now,” Herobrine tapped his fingers against his chin.

He took a mouthful of the meat and chewed, swallowed against his stomach’s rebellion. His body actually tried to bring the food back up, and Player put a hand over his mouth to fight it back. It stayed down, but he shook his head again. “I can’t.”

Herobrine looked like his own stomach had turned over when Player’s did. “Then we should walk,” he said, “while the sun is up.”

Player got to his feet, stumbling on his exercise-weakened legs. He put his pack on his shoulders and followed Herobrine into the forest.

There was a companionable silence for several long minutes. Player stayed well behind Herobrine, waiting for the sweat to dry out of his shirt in the sun. Until it did, he would not feel completely at ease.

“The book,” Herobrine said, “do you still have it?”

“Of course.” He opened his inventory and retrieved it, “What about it?”

“Have you read it?”

“Yes, after I crawled out of the cave.”

“Did you read it thoroughly?”

Player looked down. “No,” he admitted, “I got the gist.”

“Read it again.”

“What, now?” 

Herobrine turned his head to look back at him, “Why not?”

“I’ll walk into a tree,”

That got a snort of laughter, “No you won’t.”

“What’s to stop me?”

Silence, and another glance over his shoulder. Herobrine’s eye pulsed light out of a narrow slit. “I’m right here, human,” he growled.

Player felt his stomach do a flip that had nothing to do with appetite. He opened the book to the first chapter and started reading again, glancing up frequently to avoid collisions.

“The game can be broken into three distinct sections: The Overworld, The Nether, and the search for The End. What occurs after The End is located and entered cannot rightly be called a chapter or even a sub-section since it tends to be brief. This first chapter is devoted to the first section: The Overworld and journey to The Nether. It is not a

“Accessing The Nether is a simple enough task and requires little to no combat. It requires 14 pieces of obsidian, arranged into a vertical frame five blocks tall and four blocks wide. A larger portal can be constructed instead, but this is the minimum size. In addition, the player should be in possession of a flint and steel.

“There are two ways to gather the obsidian. Though all players should already be aware of both of them, we’ll cover them briefly. The first method is simply to obtain an obsidian pickaxe and mine the obsidian in a conventional way. The second method requires more legwork, but less skill.

“The bucket method requires only a basic pickaxe: wood will be sufficient, and a bucket. It’s necessary to haul 14 buckets of lava to the surface and turn each one to obsidian using water. Keep in mind that this must be done very carefully if no diamond pick is available.”

Player looked up, intending to ask Herobrine a question, but the man wasn’t in front of him anymore. He looked around and found him about three feet behind him and to his right. Herobrine had been looking over his shoulder as he read, brow creased.

He raised his own eyes and looked at Player. Their gazes locked. Herobrine tilted his head questioningly.

“Is this what it sounds like inside your head?” Player asked.

“No.”

“You’re very articulate,” he complimented hesitantly.

“I should be; I’ve read enough literature to imitate a style or two.”

Player didn’t reply to that. He looked back down again but didn’t continue reading. There was a tug on his arm as Herobrine shifted his path to avoid a tree and warm fingers on the inside of his bicep.

He looked up again, then sighed and closed the book. He knew enough anyway: use the flint and steel on one of the lower blocks of netherrack and pass through the resulting portal. After, he wasn’t sure what he would do. That was the part of the book he had skimmed over.

It was then that he realized that Herobrine was still walking close to him. No longer behind him, but by his side companionably. He looked down at himself. There was still some sweat evident on his shirt. He tried to reason it out with himself; if he perceived himself to be disgusting, how could Herobrine stand it? Maybe he just didn’t notice.

“We should try to find a lake today,” Herobrine said.

Player nodded his agreement.

“Can you find your way alone?”

“Of course,” His voice was testy. He was not inept. 

Without another word, Herobrine swung off into the forest. Player stopped short and watched him go.

Herobrine felt his gaze and turned back. “I have other things to do.”

Player understood that even though Herobrine had sought him out, he would suffocate without other activities. He was offended for a moment, and then remembered his own feelings toward Clarence. “Have fun,” he said.

Herobrine gave him a smirk. He vanished into the trees.

The breath Player took was suddenly sharp with scents of the forest. The ground beneath his feet rocked him as dirt and pebbles rose up under his feet.

He shook his head and sat down slowly. Hunger was clawing his stomach to ribbons. He retrieved the chicken from his inventory, scooted over to put his back to a tree, and devoured it. He wiped his hands on the cloth, put it back in his inventory, and stood up. The sun warmed his back as he started walking again.

Around Player, the world came to life. He had not realized how still and silent it had been before or how tense he had been.

Again it occurred to him that he might turn back and search for Clarence, but all the reasons why he shouldn’t reoccurred to him. Without Herobrine to pit himself against, he found he agreed that Clarence had run away when he most needed him. He set it aside.

Player walked for most of the afternoon, with tireless and comfortable energy he had missed for several days. Then he came across one of the little crystalline lakes he had seen from the mountains. The water blue as lapis lazuli, clear as a diamond. It was every bit as beautiful as he remembered seeing it, not the cloudy greenish thing he had dreamed up when the world was ugly.

He dropped his pack against a tree and stripped off his clothing, climbed on top of a boulder and leaped into the deeper water. Like the first time he had done it, the water was cold. He sank down, deeper than he had thought the pool went, until nearly all the light was gone. When his toes touched the stone bottom of the pool, Player opened his eyes. 

A fish whipped by, its tail stirring currents in the water. The flash of its silver was the only color in the depths aside from deep purple-black. Player spun to follow it, but it was gone. He looked up at the silver underbelly of the water, then down to the bottom of the pool. Something glinted at him from the gravel.

Player pushed off hard from the gravelly bottom of the pool. He gasped as he broke the surface and stroked over to shallower water, scrubbed himself down as best he could in the freezing water.

Before he stepped out of the water, he looked around carefully, making sure Herobrine hadn’t returned while he had been occupied. He hadn’t.

The grass was cool under his feet, and the sun had lost its heat. Player pulled on his underwear and wandered into the forest until he found a fruit tree, and picked enough peaches to keep himself fed for the next day or two. He fully intended to retrieve all the gold he could gather from the bottom of the pool.

He built himself a shelter against a tree and said his sleeping bag and the peaches inside of it. He scrubbed his clothes clean against a rock and left them out to dry overnight. He would dive for the gold in the morning.

Only after he was sitting in his shelter, half-in his sleeping bag, eating a peeled peach, did it occur to him what Herobrine might be doing. The thought turned him cold.

“He’s probably leveling another village,” he said to himself. “To… shake them up, break them out of their rut?” Something occurred to him, “Maybe he just hates how we treat the land.”

Player sighed. He examined himself, trying to tell if it bothered him at all that Herobrine might be destroying the lives of many players right at that moment. He decided that it did not, or if it did, it wasn’t enough to lose sleep over.

He licked his fingers clean of peach juice and crawled all the way into his sleeping bag. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes to block out the light.


	49. News Travels Fast

The small man in the wooden chair was trembling. His hands were wrapped around a mug of hot milk. Some of it had slopped out over his fingers, and Jeremy knew it must burn terribly, but the man gave no indication of pain. His fingertips and face were still burned red with the cold, and the chill the stones still emitted was not helping him warm up. He raised the mug with a jerk and gulped down most of its contents. He gave a shaky sigh as he set it back down, his head falling forward.

Jeremy raised his eyebrows. He fingered the head of his axe, ran two fingers down the blade of it, felt the razor edge trying to bite into his fingers. “What’s your name?” He asked

The man raised his head to look at him. “Clarence,” he said.

“Clarence,” Jeremy repeated, “Tell me, Clarence, how a farmer got the way out here?”

“I think I went the wrong way. I got lost.”

“And wandered all the way out into the tundra?” 

There was a scraping as the inner door opened. A jangle of chains preceded the servant’s entrance, taking very small steps to prevent herself from stumbling and spilling the food. She set the bowl on the table in front of Clarence and shuffled out again, not making eye contact with any occupant of the room. Clarence watched her go, his eyes flickering to the marks on her legs and exposed lower back.

Jeremy set his axe into its stand beside his chair. He sat forward. “Clarence,” he said gently, “do you know what we normally do to those who wander into our territory?”

The girl returned with bread and carefully set it beside the bowl of stew. Clarence looked at it. He was obviously hungry, but the state of the girl who brought it in was giving him pause. Her fingers were stubby and clumsy, unnatural looking.

“I am feeling charitable today.” Jeremy put a hand on the table, “Tell me what happened, and if the information is valuable to us, maybe we can make a deal.”

Clarence set his mug of milk down on the table and pushed it away. He looked at Jeremy. “You won’t believe me.”

“If it’s a good story, I might let you go anyway.”

“Herobrine,” Clarence said, “that’s my story.”

Jeremy threw his head back and roared with laughter. He gasped for breath when he stopped, and met Clarence’s eyes, expecting to see him at least smiling at the joke. The large liquid eyes held no hint of humor. They were scared and cold, dead eyes.

“You can’t be serious,” Jeremy said, “that’s some imagination you’ve got.”

“I am serious,” Clarence said, “I saw it.”

The word “it” convinced Jeremy. It was a demeaning word, reducing the object to something less than animal. Whatever the farmer had seen, he believed this was the truth. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

So Clarence told him, in precise detail. The events were burned into his mind as nothing else was, and he could picture every moment as clearly as if it were happening in front of him. His voice was trembling and choked for much of the story, and it broke at the end as he described how Herobrine had picked up his friend and carried him somewhere.

“I just ran,” he admitted to Jeremy, “I didn’t think about trying to reach him. I just ran for it and didn’t look back. I got turned around in the woods, I guess, because I wasn’t trying to go North.”

Jeremy suppressed the urge to scold him for his cowardice. In such a situation, he might have done the same, depending on how much this Player meant to him. He pulled a cord beside his chair, and within moments the main door to the chamber was opened.

“Sir?” the guard on the other side said.

“Double the watch. I want 8-hour shifts. Everyone who was off duty is now back on unless they’re mortally wounded. Anyone falls asleep on watch, throw them off the tower.”

“Yes, sir,”

“And put together an expedition. Ten men armed to the teeth. Make sure Pro is among them. They’re to go South and East to the farming settlement there. Full provisions; I don’t expect them to find any there. They’re to report back on the condition of the village and the surrounding land.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Send individual messengers to our allies. Tell them there is an unknown threat in the area and that I have reason to believe it’s capable of leveling a town in one night. They should look for a solitary male figure dressed in blue.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Relay the same message to our own guards. Shoot him on sight, don’t wait to see his eyes.”

“Is that all sir?”

“Not quite. Find our guest here a room. Something warm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, you may go.”

The guard closed the door.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Clarence said, “you won’t regret taking me seriously.”

Jeremy waved his hand modestly. He was seizing an opportunity he hadn’t expected to come his way. It was the perfect way to throw both his enemies and friends off-balance. If the threat was not real, he would simply use his prepared guards to expand his territory. If it was real, then the extra protection would be enough to stop any attacker, he was sure of that.

“What are you planning to do?” He asked Clarence.

The farmer looked down at the cold bowl of stew and a half-empty mug of milk on the table before him. “Go back to the forest,” he said, “go West around the mountains and find the Walled City. If anywhere is safe, it will be there.”

Jeremy went back to fingering his axe. “This city,” he mused, “I’ve heard of it. You’re right: it is very secure. Their guards are not to our standards, but there are many more of them and their walls are high and strong. However, I must insist you remain with us for a few days, until our expedition to your village returns. If you have lied to me, you see, I will chain you to a wall and make you pay for the food you laid before you with labor.”

Clarence’s face paled. “Why would you do that?”

“That is our solution to the currency problem. It is not slavery, my boy, only an even trade.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“I believe you, but if I’m wrong, you will have to pay back my hospitality. Your information is well worth a room and a few days of food if it proves to be correct. If not, you can expect no more than a month of servitude. The time will fly by, believe me.”

The farmer clenched his jaw and nodded.

“I would eat if I were you. You’ll be charged the price of the food whether you do or not.”

He gazed at the bowl for a long time before pulling it towards him and taking a mouthful. He ate without enjoyment, but the bowl was empty and the plate vacant by the time he was done.

The servant re-entered the room and cleared away the dishes, returning after only a few minutes to stand silently by the open side-door of the chamber.

“Is the room ready?” Jeremy asked her.

She bobbed her head in a nod.

“Very good. Clarence, please follow Molly. She’ll show you to your room.”

He stood and followed her out. The hallway outside was lit by flickering torches so far apart they left deep wells of shadow between them, but the floors had been built in such a way as to discourage mob spawning. She lead him down it, and then up several flights of stairs to a floor that was not as spotlessly clean as the lower levels. There was dust in the cracks of the stone on the walls and the torches were closer together.

“What are you paying for?” Clarence finally asked the servant, “I can’t imagine they keep you here of your free will.”

She glanced around and then said, in a voice so quiet and rough that he could barely hear. “My life,” she said, “the care that saved my life.” 

She showed him her hands, and he realized all of her fingers had been shortened by one knuckle. She scars on her back were not the marks of lashes, he realized, but the scars left over from having something heavy and sharp fall atop her.

“A rockslide?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but wouldn’t it have been easier to despawn and let your body heal?”

“We don’t know what happens when people die,” she said, “before the reset, we knew we would come back, but now we aren’t so sure. Where do we go? Do we die and never come back?”

Clarence swallowed hard. “You’re right,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I thought about it,” she told him, “but I can’t even die until I’m done with my service. After that, if I want to, I can pay for the right to be despawned. I won’t until I have proof we don’t really die though. Anything, even this, is better than death.”

He found himself nodding. Her view made sense. She’d had a lot of time to think these things through.

“Here’s your room,” she said, stepping aside to allow him to enter.

“Thank you.” She bobbed a bow and left as he entered.

The room was bare except for the bed and the fireplace, but it was warm and Clarence was in no place to complain. He sat on the bed and stared at the opposite wall. For the moment he was safe and his stomach was full and he was warm.

He felt tears prick at his eyes, and the strength he had been borrowing from fear and desperation deserted him in a rush. He folded forward and put his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said to himself, “I’m so sorry.” He knew, of course, he knew, that Ivy and Bit and the others were not really dead. They would be back. He knew they would be back. He believed they would be back with everything he had. It didn’t make sense for them all to be dead, really dead. There weren’t that many people in the game. Surely they could not die. If they could, the population would be zero in less than three years. It just would not happen. That made sense, and he knew it was so.

It was Player he was scared for. Last he had seen him, Player was not dead, but being kidnapped by a monster. He had watched Herobrine pick his friend up, seen the blood on Player’s shirt, known he was wounded. Herobrine had probably saved Player’s life, but at what cost? Indentured servitude was bad enough, but there were so many much worse things that could be being done to Player right then, things that did not bear thinking about. He did not doubt that someone like Herobrine would find enjoyment in torture or in humiliating his captive. Perhaps he had others too. Maybe Player was not alone, but with a group of people Herobrine had collected. What would he have them do, fight for his entertainment? Battle mobs like the monster in the ground? The possibilities were endless.

“I’m sorry I ran away,” Clarence said, wishing the words could reach Player, “I’ll never do it again, I promise. You put yourself between me and death, and I ran away like the coward I am.” Here he broke down entirely and sobbed. Once all the tears were gone, he went to bed, hoping that Player was safe and warm and full of food.

On the third day of his stay, Clarence was called down to the hall again. There sat Jeremy on his throne and before him was a man who seemed three sizes too large for the room. He looked at Clarence with distaste, and there was a definite curl to his lip when he said, “So this is the farmer.”

“Behave, Pro.” Jeremy said, “Clarence here was lucky to escape alive. Now report.”

“There is no village in the place you told us to look,” Pro said, “only ruins and churned-up fields full of animal tracks. There are chickens nesting in fallen roofs and hogs have battered down the doors to the grain storages. There was much meat to be had, so most of our rations have been returned to the warehouses. The fire was the cause of the destruction as far as we could tell, though it looked as if the animals had broken down many of the doors to the buildings and slaughtered those inside. Some still had blood on them. Other than that--”

“That is quite enough, thank you.” Jeremy looked at Clarence, “It seems you were telling me the truth. As promised, you are free to go. I would ask you to leave today. It would seem we have much to do in the interest of keeping ourselves safe, and we cannot have another mouth to feed.”

Clarence nodded. He had learned Jeremy did not enjoy conversation. It was better to agree and go on his way. He was turned out of the village with strict instruction not to stop walking until he was back into the forest. He was not exactly happy, but it was good to be back on the road and going where he was supposed to go. Once he reached the Walled City, it would be possible to rally support, he believed, to find Player’s house and see if he could find a safer way into the mountains than through the crack he had used before. He was certain that somewhere within the ring was where he would find his friend and the monster who had stolen him.


	50. First Steps

From “A Case Study of Nonhuman Attraction,” published online by Ana Dane and Dr. Benjamin Pond.

There have been many inquiries into the science of physical contact between humans. Dopamine boosts have been recorded, oxytocin spikes noted. Endorphins have a great deal to answer for when it comes to physical relationships. 

For those whose genetics are not quite so vanilla, the effect is much more pronounced. Humans will claim they are addicted to their significant other, and to physical contact, and in the more sensitive people it may nearly be true. For a nonhuman, the physical response produced by contact resembles nothing so much as a human brain immediately after a shot of morphine, except of course that the endorphins are naturally generated and the “shot” will remain stable for as long as the contact.

In essence, this means that a nonhuman can become addicted, both emotionally and physically, to intimate physical contact. In fact, those who have spent any time around nonhumans have noticed that they are almost always touching each other in some way. This is a safe way to get their fix. Entering into such activities with humans puts both them and their chosen companions at risk.

* * *

He closed his hand around one of the little glittering stars at the bottom of the pool. Mud and silt sifted through his fingers, leaving only a few round pebbles behind. Player kicked off hard from the bottom and broke the surface of the water with a gasp. The water felt warmer than the air this early in the morning, so it was reluctantly that he pulled his upper body out of it to pick through his handful of stones.

There was a gold nugget among them. He picked it out and set it atop the small pile he had gathered. The other pebbles he let fall back into the water. They pipped against the surface, some of them so light they almost floated instead of sank.

Player paused a moment, his arms crossed on the bank. The shore of the lake was stone here and dropped off so his feet were kicking idly beneath him. The sun was outlining the leaves on the trees with copper and gold and starting to dry the dew on the grass. He sighed, closed his eyes against it. He felt alive as he paddled back out into the the small lake.

He took a deep breath and held it as he dived, eyes open against the sting of the water. The bottom of the pool below him glittered. He reached one of the little stars and grabbed, felt again the loose mud sift out of his fingers as he did so, and returned to the surface. He examined his hand while treading water and swam over to the bank to add another nugget to the growing pile. This time he noticed, with some interest, that the dew on the grass had vanished, and the stalks no longer swayed in the breeze. When next he plunged his head beneath the water, it seemed cooler than it had before, and less refreshing somehow. 

Nevertheless, he again brought up gold and made his way back to the bank. He added it to the pile and again spared a moment to sunbathe and enjoy himself.

“I am confused. What are you doing?”

Player gasped and lost his grip on the bank. He slid backwards into the cold water, head bobbing beneath the surface before he came back up spluttering. He twisted around to look behind him. Herobrine was sitting on a rock just inside the treeline, looking at him. He scanned the man’s body for signs of a battle, but there was nothing, not even a scuff on his shoe. He concluded that there had been no village levelled, no setbacks for any humans. There had only been Herobrine off somewhere doing whatever he did for fun.

They looked at each other. Player sank lower in the water, remembering that he was not wearing anything. He knew he was blushing, but he pushed the embarrassment away.

“I-I’m bringing up gold,” he said, “it’s all over the bottom of the lake.”

Herobrine looked at the small pile of gold nuggets, then back at Player. “I guessed that. Why are you doing it?”

His shrug sent ripples across the surface of the lake. “It might be useful.”

The man raised the brow over one bright eye, “It might be useless soft metal.”

“For trading,” Player explained. He pulled himself part way onto the bank again and crossed his arms in the grass. “I could buy something with it,”

“Or it could slow you down while you run from attackers.”

“I could bribe a guard with it.”

Herobrine gave that thought. “Maybe,” he said, “if they were the right guards.”

He was looking at the grass again, running his fingers through it, “I’ll find a use for it. This grass was wet a few minutes ago and now it’s perfectly dry.”

“Was it?”

“It was covered in dew,” he plucked a blade of grass.

“Dew.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, but he clearly didn’t understand.

Player looked at him, “You know, the droplets of water that collect overnight and then evaporate once the sun comes out. Dew.”

Herobrine looked bemused. An expression crossed his face like he was trying very hard to understand something that he could not grasp, then he gasped in a breath. There was a very slight pop, as of a rapid change in pressure.

Player looked at the blade of grass in his fingers. Moisture ran down its length, even where he hadn’t touched it with his wet hands. The grass around him was once again dotted with moisture as well. “That’s strange,” he muttered.

Herobrine stood up and walked toward the lake The cuffs of his jeans dampened with dew as he came. Player backed off, pushing away from the bank. He swam backwards and sank down until only his eyes were above the water. He was blushing again.

The man knelt by the edge of the pool and picked up one of the gold nuggets. He squeezed it out of shape using his fingers then snorted derisively and threw it into the water. Player dived after it without thinking. He grabbed the little chunk of metal before it was even halfway to the bottom and came back to the surface glaring at Herobrine.

“Why did you do that?” He demanded.

Herobrine just looked at him.

In irritation, and because he did not really care about the nugget, Player threw it at him. Herobrine caught the rock, surprise crossing his face at the retaliation. Then he grinned and tossed the nugget into the air, an easy looping arc that carried it high before it plopped down into the water. Again Player dived after it, caught it before it reached the bottom. This time he did not resurface immediately, but swam deeper. He reached the bottom and searched through the gravel around him, snatching up two more nuggets. By then his lungs were burning with the need for air, and he pushed up hard.

Herobrine was staring into the water when he burst from the surface. Player brushed his wet hair back from his face with one hand, and raised the other. One after another he threw the nuggets to the man on the bank.

“That’s what you were doing down there for so long,” he tested one of the nuggets with his fingernail and found it soft as butter.

“It’s fun,” Player said.

That peaked Herobrine’s interest, “Maybe I’ll try it then.” He dropped the gold into the pile and toed his shoes off. 

It struck Player what he meant to do when he reached down to the hem of his shirt, exposing a stomach that was smooth and solid with muscle.

“No!” he cried.

Herobrine gave him a puzzled look, “No?”

“Wait until I’m out of the water first,” Player insisted, “and turn around.”

Herobrine dropped his shirt. He backed away from the shore, leaving his shoes behind, and turned his back on the lake and the human in it.

Player swam to the bank and scrambled out of the water. He scooped his clothing off of the rock he had left it on the night before, not caring that the water from his skin would dampen it again, and hid himself behind the outcropping. All the while he watched Herobrine to make sure he didn’t turn around. He didn’t so much as twitch.

He pulled on his clothes, soaking them in the process. “Okay,” he called to Herobrine, “now you can do whatever you want.”

He heard the man grumbling to himself, and the sound of fabric being removed from a body. The urge to peek over the rock became almost overpowering at once. He clenched his fists for a long time, trying to force down the urge. Just a glance couldn’t hurt, could it? He turned and stood on tiptoe to see over the rock.

Herobrine was bending over sliding his shoes back onto his feet. Player felt a snag of disappointment and hated himself for it. He shuddered at the thought of what he had just tried to do, the privacy he had almost violated, and it took several seconds for him to calm himself enough that he knew his blush had faded. Then he stepped out from behind the rock and did his best to feign surprise.

“You’re not swimming after all?” He asked.

“No,” Herobrine said, “I have better things to do.”

Player picked up the pile of gold and put it into his inventory. His belongings were looking thin and worn, but he found he didn’t care. “In that case, I’m going to start walking.”

“There are caves nearby,”

Player surged with excitement. He turned, “Where?”

Herobrine indicated at area of the forest to the North of them, towards the mountains. “If you want to find the obsidian soon, it’s your best bet.”

That was what this was about then. Player couldn’t deny it was intriguing, but it wasn’t why he was interested in the caves. He needed iron, and possibly more diamonds. The Obsidian, as far as he was concerned, was of no great importance. “I’ll get there.”

He gathered up the rest of his belongings and turned towards the mountains. Herobrine joined him as he walked. He was closer than he had been the day before, and for the first time Player caught a breath of his scent. He had been expecting the smell of sweat to be overpowering for some reason, but obviously Herobrine had bathed somewhere. His scent was far too clean to be the product of longs days hiking in the sun, and it was far more subtle than in the room that had confined him underground. Even so, it made Player’s heart pound.

“No,” he told himself, “no time for that. Think of other things.” He forced his mind back to the caves and the riches beneath the ground. The obsidian was good to think about too. Getting the stuff was always such a pain that it was worth planning how he would do it. As long as he was thinking about that, he wouldn’t be thinking about Herobrine or that one fleeting glimpse of his stomach.

The caves were not hard to find. Player selected the most promising of them, the one that went nearly vertical immediately. He stood on the edge and looked down into the darkness. It was a long way down, but he didn’t know how far. He reached for a torch, but he didn’t have any. He didn’t even have coal.

He dug through his pack again, sure he had missed something. All he needed was one chunk.

“What’s wrong?” Herobrine asked.

“I don’t have any torches,”

“Here,” he dropped a redstone torch into the cave. It’s faint red light illuminated stone a long way down before it bounced off an outcropping and went spinning into total darkness.

Player whistled. “That is a long way down.” He stepped over the edge and into darkness. The slope was less than vertical so he was able to partially control his slide until his foot caught on a jut of stone and he went tumbling. He managed to roll on his side rather than somersault down the hill. He hit a ledge and stopped. His breath had gone with the impact and he could feel a host of new bruises blooming on his back and sides. He got to his feet and leaned against the rock. He struggled for a moment before air whooshed back into his lungs, and then he coughed out rock dust.

There was an impact on the rock not far away, and a flash of white eyes.

“Stupid human,” Herobrine growled.

“I’m okay,” Player said, his voice rasping against his throat. The white eyes came closer in the darkness, and he realized they were narrowed.

A redstone torch came to life in Herobrine’s hands. It gave just enough light to outline the two figures in the darkness. He placed it on the wall and then grabbed Player’s arm that wasn’t pinned against the wall. He tried to step away, but instead a tug pulled him closer.

The hand on his arm dropped. In the dimness, all he saw was the shadow moving towards him, and then there were hands on him, patting him down. Herobrine checked his arms before moving on to his sides and back. He pressed close to do it, his eyes flickering as he felt for injuries.

“I’m fine,” Player insisted. The touches were sending tingles all the way up his back. He squirmed away from Herobrine’s hands. His foot found the edge of the ledge and he lurched backwards. His stomach jumped inside him as he started to fall.

Herobrine pulled him back onto the ledge and reversed their positions so that he was the one on the edge and Player had his back to the stone cliffs. “Hold still,” he insisted.

Player’s heart was still pounding. He found himself reaching to steady himself against Herobrine and forced himself to lower his hands.

“What were you thinking?”

He was looking into the white eyes his hands balled into fists at his sides, and it felt like he was still winded. “I wasn’t,” he muttered.

“Obviously,” he went back to checking for injuries. 

“I do it all the time.”

“Jump off cliffs?”

“Yes,”

“And how often do you hit your head on the way down?”

“Pretty often,” Player admitted.

Herobrine had stopped patting him down. A frown made his eyes narrow, increasing the light. He raised a hand and another torch formed in it, black snow coalescing out of thin air. He held it close enough for Player to feel the heat while he examined an abrasion on his elbow. He flicked a piece of gravel out of it. “So stop doing it.”

Player nodded, but he thought to himself that if taking a tumble always resulted in this intimacy he might do it more often. The pain wasn’t that bad. It was never worse than bruises, and bruises were no big deal.

“You’ll crack your head open,” Herobrine warned him.

He swallowed hard and nodded. Keeping his hands by his sides was becoming a real effort. “Can we get moving again?” he asked.

The stare he received was long and level. Finally Herobrine stepped out of the way. He threw the torch he was holding into the cave, and it briefly illuminated smooth stone all the way down.

Player stepped off the edge and slid down, exactly the same way he had before. He did it to spite Herobrine, but he enjoyed the thrill of the fall too. There was nothing like the rush he got from falling into blackness.

He heard a growl of laughter from Herobrine, fading as he moved away, and then the cascade of pebbles as he was followed. The torch was laying at the bottom of the slope, and he reached it without even stumbling. He left it where it was and stepped out of the way to let Herobrine come to a stop.

“I can’t stop you,” He said as soon as the slide had ended, “If you brain yourself don’t expect my sympathy.”

Player smiled, “I won’t.” He didn’t expect it now. That was why he was so surprised Herobrine cared.

He got a chuckle in response, and then another torch came to life in the outstretched hand.

Player couldn’t suppress the question any longer, “How do you do that?”

Herobrine looked at the redstone torch. “I don’t know. I just do it.” He started leading the way into the cave. Player followed behind, content to follow the light.

“But you couldn’t do it before,”

Herobrine turned to face him, and he almost walked into his chest. “Before the reset, you mean?”

Player nodded.

“I couldn’t do a lot of things,” Herobrine admitted, “I was modified when I was there.”

“Modified?”

The man sighed. He offered Player his hand. Player hesitated, looking at it.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, forcing humor into his tone.

“If we’re going to talk about this, you’ll have to lead me.”

“Oh,” he looked for some excuse, his eyes darting around the cave, “let me make my own torch first. It will be brighter.”

“Very well.”

Player went to the coal he had spotted in the wall. He took his pickaxe off his back and mined enough coal to make a stack of torches. He made them and lit one before turning back to Herobrine. The man was letting his own dissolve, as Player’s was much brighter and more natural.

Herobrine offered his hand again as he came drew close. It wasn’t the fact that he was doing it but how he did it that made Player giddy. If it had been anyone else, they would have offered their hand palm-up and fingers pressed together, and the resulting grip would have been like a handshake. Herobrine simply held his hand away from his body, palm down, and his fingers weren’t pressed together hard.

Player wiped the coal dust off his palm, took a deep breath, and took Herobrine’s hand. He tried to grip like a handshake, his fingers together beneath his thumb, but the other hand twisted in his and their fingers slid together. It felt so natural that he didn’t notice it for a moment, and then he realized what he had done and his body went rigid with panic. He dropped his hand and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” he said reflexively, “I can’t.”

Herobrine looked at him. He was hurt. He was trying to figure out what about him repulsed Player too much to even touch him. He decided it was the killing that did it. The human could stand being near a murderer was something he could tolerate but touching one was was repulsive to him. Or maybe it was his body? Herobrine looked down at himself. No, that couldn’t be it, and he was clean so it wasn’t the smell of him. It must be the killing.

The look on Herobrine’s face as he went through this diagnosis shamed Player. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t mean to kill the boy,” Herobrine said.

“What?”

“The boy…?”

“Gaimon?” Player asked.

“Gaimon. I didn’t mean to kill him. I wanted to make him stop talking. I didn’t think it would kill him.”

“Really?”

“I was expecting the blade to bounce back. I remember that much. I wanted to give him a bruise, that was all.”

“So why didn’t you pull the sword back out again?”

Herobrine shook his head, “I don’t remember. I remember thrusting the blade forward, seeing the first drop of blood, then nothing until the boy was dead and we were alone in the room.”

“So you don’t remember rambling about how easy it would be to kill everyone in the building?” Player recalled the memory. It was burned into his mind.

“Not at all,” He closed his eyes, “let’s climb back out of here before I explain. You’ll have somewhere to run to.”

Player felt a burst of sympathy, “Maybe we should find the obsidian first,” he suggested.

“I’d rather get it out of the way.”

“And I’d rather not have to worry about leading you around in the dark. You can tell me some other time.”

Herobrine’s face and body relaxed.

Player took a deep breath, “We can…” he gathered up his courage only to have it flee him, “We can still…”

Herobrine looked at him. He made no sign he understood.

He mumbled out the words under his breath, “We can still hold hands if you want.” His eyes squeezed shut almost at once as embarrassment at his own boldness set in. He braced himself for a rejection, verbal or physical. He didn’t know which would be worse.

Herobrine looked him, first with disbelief and then with a delight he only just hid. He had misjudged again, he realized. It was not that Player found him repulsive, only that he was shy. He held out his hand again, not trusting himself to speak.

Player saw the movement and looked up. His own shock gave way to relief only a moment later. In the same moment, he decided that this was done out of pity or sympathy not genuine affection. After all, what was he compared to Herobrine? That thought made him feel ill, and he wanted to take back his statement, but it was too late now and saying another word right then was too nerve wracking to chance. And all that aside, he really did want to hold hands, to touch Herobrine somehow.

Player put his hand on the inside of Herobrine’s elbow and traced his forearm all the way down to the palm of his hand. He could feel the muscles and tendons in his arm, how they tensed under his touch. Herobrine’s skin was warm beneath his fingers. The fine hairs on the underside of his arm stood up at his touch, and he felt the slightest shiver under his hand. His palm was rough and soft in patches where sword and tools bit into flesh and where they did not. Player’s fingers slid into place between Herobrine’s. Warmth spread through him from head to toe and he found he no longer cared whether or not this was done out of pity.

Player was glad the light from the torch wasn’t that bright, so Herobrine couldn’t see his face. He was sure it gave away every emotion raging inside him.

“Let’s go,” he said after a few seconds.

Herobrine opened his eyes. Player had missed him closing them. He nodded. It was only after a couple minutes of walking that Player realized that his companion was purring. It was not precisely a purr, but Herobrine was making a rumbling noise deep in his chest that bespoke contentedness to even Player’s ears. They walked like that, swinging their linked arms a little as they went, for a time.

Player broke the silence when the delight of touching had faded and his curiosity had built back up. “Why would I need to lead you if you talked about the compound?”

Herobrine’s hand tightened around his, and Player formed a clear picture of what it would be like to be held in place by those hands. His strengths was impressive.

“It’s hazy,” Herobrine’s voice was husky, “I’m not sure I can walk straight while I try to remember.”

“Then you can tell me when you’re sitting down.”

He hummed in response, the sound reverberating in his chest. The silence reasserted itself, and they let it be. 

The cave dipped down again, into darkness that the torch couldn’t illuminate. Player looked at it for a few seconds before he released Herobrine’s hand. He left their palms pressed together for a moment more, then pulled away completely and lit another torch. He threw it down the drop. It wasn’t nearly as deep as the first one but it was more jagged.

He started picking his way down the slope. It was slow going, but he couldn’t very well slide down this. Herobrine was still at the top of the drop, his outline grew dimmer and dimmer as Player moved away, until even the twin beacons of his eyes were invisible.

Player stopped, his hand braced on a block, and looked back up. He wondered why there was no redstone torch flickering in the gloom to provide light. Maybe Herobrine preferred darkness. Maybe he could see in it. It was a strange thing to know so little about someone he liked so much. No one he could remember had given him that feeling, the crackling up his back and warmth through his fingers. The electricity just wasn’t there. Even Clarence had only been a faint buzz in his system. 

He hoped Clarence wouldn’t take it too hard when--when what? Had he already made that decision without even knowing it?

“Are you stuck?” Came a voice from above him.

Player realized he hadn’t been moving, “No. I’m okay.” He put his mind firmly back in the here and now and finished picking his way down the slope.

He turned and looked back up to Herobrine.the white pinpoints of his eyes were just visible. They blinked out of existence. Player stared at the place they had been, but a moment later there was a thud beside him at Herobrine landed. He jumped and spun around. The man was straightening up from what must have been a hard landing. He had the other torch in his hand and held it aloft to double their light. It still wasn’t enough to illuminate their faces.

“Who’s going to crack their head open now?” Player teased.

“You,” a harsh edge to the word. It was a real warning.

He started to protest, but a hand slipped into his again, pressing the fingers apart a little. He sighed and gave Herobrine’s hand a squeeze.

Several more times there were places in the cave they were forced to separate to clamber down steep slopes. Or, more accurately, Player clambered down. Herobrine seemed to pop into existence at the bottom of each slope, or to jump down without care if the drops were anywhere close to vertical. When the cave itself grew steep and difficult to navigate, they gave up holding hands. By then Player was almost drunk on the contact. Herobrine was drunk on it, but he hid it well.

Player saw hot red light beneath them and felt a surge in heat. “There’s lava,” he told Herobrine.

“I know,” it was almost a growl, but the note was wrong. There was no anger in his voice.

Player shivered and didn’t reply.

The bottom of the cave levelled out fast and the pool of lava was only three blocks away. The heat of it was overwhelming. Player broke into a sweat and started fretting about his appearance. The buzz of touching faded. Instead of allowing himself to spiral out if control, he looked at the cave.

There was a stream of water that ran off into a little pool of water beside the lava. That was good, provided that he wanted to get the obsidian right then. What he felt like doing was crawling into a hole where he couldn’t be seen. Whether or not Herobrine would follow him in there wasn’t really up to him.

Player turned to look at the man. Herobrine was leaning against the wall watching him, a dreamy sort of smirk on his face.

“I’m going to find some iron,” he said, “to make a bucket.”

Herobrine blinked and became himself again. He nodded without speaking.

Player walked the first few steps backwards, then turned and followed the stream of water up into a new section of the cave. He could feel Herobrine’s gaze burning into his back as he left.

He didn’t think about anything as he climbed up. It didn’t take long for him to spot and minte some iron. He opted to set up his furnace on the spot and smelt some of it rather than go back down and face the heat of the lava and the intense presence of the man weighing on him. 

To pass the time, Player followed the stream of water back up to its source. It turned out to be a hole in the ceiling of the cave that probably lead up into an underground lake. He leaned into the water and soaked his hair to help keep him cool by the lava.

There was the snarl of a zombie from somewhere nearby, and Player’s left hand tightened on thin air. He looked down at it before realizing he had been trying to squeeze Herobrine’s hand. The instinct had sunk in so fast that it shocked him. He could not say he disliked it, but it was unsettling.

The first two ingots out of the furnace did not go towards a bucket, but into a slapdash sword he made with the leftover wood in his inventory. It was not a very sturdy weapon, but if it fell apart after one attack, that was one attack he wouldn’t have to execute using only his fists or pick. After sparring with Herobrine, he was starting to feel more comfortable with a melee weapon in hand, but he had a long way to go before he was comfortable handling even one of the enhanced mobs in this area.

He willed the furnace to smelt faster, pacing in front of the furnace and alternately pushing his now sopping hair out of his eyes and reaching back to feel the handle of his pickaxe with his left hand because his right was holding the new sword. The torch that had accompanied him was stuck to the wall and all but forgotten about.

When the iron was done, he made a bucket using the standard recipe. Some of the blacksmiths could tease out a whole container from one ingot, but Player didn’t have either the skill or the time to do such a thing, so he took the unwieldy substitute, packed up his things, and returned to the lava below.

Herobrine was crouched on the balls of his feet by the edge of the molten rock, one hand braced flat against the stone by his feet, the other reaching out over the lava. He was leaning forward at a worrying angle. For one dizzying moment, Player thought he meant to throw himself into the boiling rock, but the man looked up at him and all thought of that faded as his eyes cooled to their usual half-radiance. Herobrine looked too happy to be contemplating a dip into hell itself.

and then Herobrine leaned forward and his hand disappeared into the molten rock.

Player shouted in horror, racing forward. He was intending to pull Herobrine back from the edge of the pit, but he didn’t get the chance.

Herobrine pulled his hand from the lava, and something emerged behind it. It was his sword, blue diamond shimmering with enchantments and lava dripping from its surface. It was as sharp as if it was brand new. Both it and the hand gripping it were coated in a thin sheen of cooling rock. Herobrine transferred the sword to his other hand and cracked off the thin gray coating with a flex of his fingers. He looked expectantly at Player.

The human decided that if they were being honest he might as well say what he was thinking. “You scare me,” he told Herobrine.

He got a long flat stare in return, the face behind the eyes unreadable. “Good,” he growled, “that’s a healthy reaction.”

Player instantly felt guilty. He opened his mouth to try to explain and then closed it again. What could he say? Had he already broken the trust between them? Instead he bent and filled the bucket from the pool of water, approached the lava and sloshed the whole bucket over the molten rock. There was a sharp hiss as the majority of the pool was covered in a layer of obsidian.

Herobrine jumped across the two blocks of lava still present on the outermost surface and walked to him over the black stone. He reached up and brushed a hand over Player’s wet hair. “Take another dip?” He asked.

“Not exactly,”

“And you made a sword,”

Player shifted, “I heard something and panicked. It’s not a good sword.”

“It’ll do for now,” a grin spread across his face and he gestured at the obsidian, “Shall we?”

Player nodded, and stepped around Herobrine to the obsidian. He felt a hand brush over his arm, and the sword was plucked out of his hand as he went by.

Herobrine hefted it while Player knelt by the obsidian. Actually mining the stuff was such a pain he almost never did it. The only purpose of mining obsidian he had known about before the book was blast protection, and he had never needed that.

He started by mining one of the edge blocks, exposing the deeper lava beneath, then washed that block with water too to give himself a place to stand. The first block dropped into the lava and was wasted, and since Player couldn’t plunge his hand into molten rock and have it come out intact, he didn’t try to save it. He stood on the new obsidian and mined the block in front of him, catching it before it fell into the lava. Then he tilted a bit more water onto the newly exposed liquid and solidified that as well. 

In this way, he gathered fourteen pieces of obsidian, working his way almost all the way across the pool in the process. By that time his hair was dry and he was overheating. He emptied his water bottle before turning. Herobrine had the iron sword across his knees and was leaning his elbows on the flat of the blade while he watched Player work. His chin moved up a little.

“Get four more,” he said, “We’ll need them.”

“I know how to make an enchanting table,” Player said testily, “will you fill this up for me?” 

Herobrine set the sword aside and walked to him, took the bottle out of his hand. He looked stunned by Player’s boldness, but he did as he was asked. 

When he brought it back, Player said, “What did you do when you were gone?”

“I expected you to ask sooner,” was what he got instead of a reply. There was a pause while Herobrine looked at him, sizing him up again. He had been making errors in judgement when it came to Player for some time, and he did not want to get this wrong.

“You don’t have to tell me,” the human said. 

“I was looking at the land outside of the valley.

He turned back to his work, working another chunk loose. “Did you see anything interesting?”

Herobrine sat on one of the obsidian blocks ringing Player’s working space. He dipped his fingers into the lava, and the human paused to watch him pull strings of white heat through the liquid. He pulled his fingers out, streaming stone dripping from them, and used the stuff to draw curls on the obsidian beside him.

“I saw many things,” he said finally, “there are settlements all around, some small and some large. I am unsure where to start with them.”

Player stopped moving. He looked at him, realizing what he meant. He asked anyway, “What do you mean?”

“Let’s talk about it in the sun.”

Maybe that was wise. He went back to his work. “You’re very calm. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Being still is nice.”

“Being still,” Player repeated in a murmur. An odd phrase, like Herobrine was hitting the pause button, like he was anchoring himself down in a river. He cracked off a chunk of obsidian, “That’s the last one.”

Herobrine stood up and walked to the way they had entered the cave.

Player looked around, scanning the cave. He had not left much of a mark. The lava still bubbled, though the exposed surface was much smaller now. He picked up the iron sword from where Herobrine had left it and followed him to the cave entrance and passed him into the darkness.

Herobrine watched him go into the darkness for a long time before he followed. When he caught up, he said, “I’ll tell you why I can’t remember when we get out of here.”

“There’s no rush,” Player paused to put the sword away. It felt like Herobrine had done something to it. The handle had been a little loose when he’d first made it, but now it was solid and the blade looked sharper. Even before he had closed his inventory, a hand had appeared on his arm. He let the fingers slide between his own.

“You,” a voice purred in his ear, “are too good to be true.”

Player flinched away, but his whole body was alive with pleasure at the compliment. “A-and will you tell me what you’re going to do with all the other villages?”

“Only if you tell me something in return.”

“Very well,” he mimicked Herobrine’s voice, letting his own slip down an octave.

He felt the man pull away, and had to laugh at the reaction. He realized only later that his hand and his arm were sticky with sweat. Herobrine didn’t seem to care.


	51. Precipice

From the research notes of Ana Dane, margin, 4 April 2018:

The most terrifying thing about the monsters is how human they can be when they try.

* * *

“So,” Player poked at the fire, “why can’t you remember killing Gaimon?”

Herobrine, sitting with his legs crossed on the other side of the fire and leaning his hands on the dirt in front of him, blinked. He still looked muzzy. The only reason he had his hands pressed to the ground was because he was shaking. He wanted to catch Player’s hand in his, but the human had rebuffed him twice already.

“I was modified,” Herobrine said. He pulled a burning stick out of the fire and tapped it in the grass.

“What does that mean exactly?” Player rotated the fish leaning over the flames.

Herobrine steeled himself against Player’s reaction to his next words. “You’ve noticed that I can do things.”

Player nodded.

“When they modified me, they split me so I couldn’t do any of those things.”

“Split you?”

His face across the fire was half-shadowed even with the glowing eyes. “Yes. If someone took your pickaxe away and dropped you in the middle of a cave with only a single torch it might be comparable.”

“That’s extreme. And disturbing.”

“It wasn’t in my case,” he had been disturbed. He had been terrified. The only thing that had made the whole experience tolerable was sitting across the fire from him. That and the food.

Player nodded, “You did enough without those abilities.”

That stung. “But part of my mind was gone too.”

Player sucked at a scorched fingertip, and Herobrine stopped talking. The human looked at him, but he didn’t speak.

Herobrine shifted uncomfortably, “It felt like I was dreaming,” he said. “I don’t remember any of it clearly.”

“So, why did you blackout when you stabbed Gaimon?”

“The part of me that enjoys fighting had been locked away completely. It was trying to break loose, and I guess it did. I’m relieved there was someone besides you to vent it on.”

Player shuddered, “I didn’t think about that.”

There was silence except for the fire crackling and the first screeches of spiders in the trees.

“Will that happen again?” Player asked.

“No. None of me is locked away now.”

“So you’re not going to black out and stab me?”

“Not unless you stab me first. Then I might be angry enough to hurt you, but I would remember it afterwards.” He put the stick back into the fire, and it flared up bright.

“No attacking you,” Player said, “got it.”

“Just to be safe.”

“Who split you then?” He started rubbing the handle of his pick, running his fingers over the already smooth wood.

A playful smirk twisted Herobrine’s mouth, “No, no, no. If I tell you things, you have to tell me things.”

Player looked at him, “There’s nothing to tell that you don’t know.”

“Nothing?” He was surprised.

“No,” Player pulled one of the fish out of the fire and tested it. “They’re done.” He passed the stick over the fire.

Herobrine hadn’t even known he was getting one of the fish, but he took it anyway. Across the fire, Player bit into his dinner. He made a little noise of pleasure as he chewed. It sent a little thrill through Herobrine’s abdomen.

He nibbled at his own fish, not touching it with his hands. It was good. Hot and flaky. The hesitation was only a moment, and then he took a bite.

Player smiled at him over his own fish. There was quiet while they both chewed, and Herobrine gulped two more bites.

“I don’t remember anything from before the game,” Player said, “and you already know about me once I got here.”

“And you’re giving me shit about amnesia,” Herobrine grumbled.

“Please don’t swear,” Player said, surprising himself.

He got a stare, blank eyes widened and then narrowed in annoyance, but the man nodded.

“Besides,” he went on a tad frantically, “it’s normal around here. Half the people here can’t remember anything before waking up in the compound.”

“Nothing at all? It’s just a big gaping hole in your memory?”

Player nodded, “Exactly.”

“What came before the hole?”

“What?”

“If it’s a hole, there must be another edge so you can know you didn’t just come into existence in the compound when you woke up.”

Player frowned at the ground. He shook his head, “No. It’s just blank. I guess I just took everyone else’s word for it that there was something before and I was like them. I think we’ve already had that conversation.”

“Well, that information is a fair trade,” Herobrine said, “I have no idea who woke me up and put me into the compound.”

Player smiled at him. 

They ate the rest of their fish in silence, the human missing the glances Herobrine threw his way. He was doing a good job of suppressing his own impulse to look. Player threw down the remains of the food and yawned into his hand.

“Going to bed soon?” Herobrine asked.

“In a minute,” he rubbed his hands in the grass to remove most of the oils from his fingers. One thing was still bothering him. “Herobrine.”

There was a hum in response. The man was still chewing.

“All the other villages and people… what are you going to do to them?”

He swallowed and thought about it, setting what remained of the fish aside. “The same thing I did to you,” he said, “minus the hand holding. And saving your life.”

“I suppose you’d just let them die if they got hurt.”

“I would. They’d come back after all.”

“I’d come back too,” he pointed out.

Herobrine didn’t reply.

Player sighed, “So what, you’re going to destroy their homes and scare them senseless and possibly kill some of them. Why?”

“To shake them loose and motivate them to beat the game.”

Player had been beginning to feel his anger growing again, but those words, that tone, stopped him. He looked at Herobrine. It wasn’t just malice or enjoyment that motivated the man, though that was definitely a part of it. Player didn’t know what it was quite yet, but he knew he liked it a lot more than his previous vision of Herobrine as driven only by a lust for destruction.

“Do what you have to do,” he said.

Herobrine was visibly relieved. His eyes dimmed and his body slumped. There was a reaction in the fire too, Player noted. The flames flickered lower and glowed a deep red.

“I’m going to bed now,” Player stood up, “are you going to stay here?”

Herobrine shook his head a little. “I can move around more easily at night.”

“Okay,” Player filled his bucket with water from the lake and doused the fire with it. He turned and moved into his shelter from the night before, then had to reemerge to dispose of the fruit pits still inside. Herobrine was already gone, and the monsters were a lot closer than they had been. He missed the fact that the man was sitting on the roof of his shelter as he hurried back inside.

Herobrine waited until he heard Player lay down and the torch light from inside the shelter remained steady rather than flickering with movement. Then he hopped off the roof and sat with his back against the door. He tilted his head so he was looking up at the sky and thought. He tried to drown out the sound of the mobs and Player sinking into sleep with his own thoughts, but couldn’t manage it. He was shaking again, trembling in a way he had never seen or heard of before. His hands were nowhere near steady, and all he could think of was Player’s hand in his and the bliss that went along with it.

But the trust between them was tenuous and he did not want to break it. Maybe, someday, he could tell the human about this, this shaking, this hunger, but not yet. He had to channel it into other things.

Herobrine levered himself up against the door. He tilted his head to better hear the breathing inside, closing his eyes to absorb the sound. Then he turned and walked away. He needed to release the pent up energy in some other way.

He chose a village as far away from Player as he could get, just to be safe.

From there, the days took on a rhythm. Player would wake up, and if Herobrine wasn’t present, he would walk West. If he was present, there would be no travel for the day. Herobrine insisted on sparring on a regular basis, and as Player’s stamina improved the sessions could last hours at a time. He should have pushed on after sparring, he knew, but it was easy to pass time in some other way that didn’t strain his body to its breaking point.

So progress slowed, but Player was in no hurry to get anywhere, with Herobrine found and Clarence somewhere safe. He didn’t think about Clarence much. There were a lot of other things to consider on a daily basis. Since Herobrine had stopped pushing to complete the game quickly, there wasn’t any pressure on him. Except there were still 14 pieces of obsidian taking up space in his inventory, and the book that he leafed through at night when there was no one to talk to.

“How do you go about killing Endermen?” he asked Herobrine on the ninth day as soon at the man appeared.

“With water at your back,” was the reply, and by then Player was familiar enough with Herobrine’s tactics that he did not need to ask for clarification.

“Want something to eat?” He said instead.

Soon enough the days began to blur, his movement slowed even more. He found himself spending days at a time in one location, gathering resources and food or sparring. They never talked about anything of real importance, and aside from the odd tumble while fighting, never touched.

The frustration of that drove Herobrine to other activities, particularly those that left villages in shambles. Player knew it was happening, but he never really minded. He had lost his sense of urgency completely.


	52. Diplomatic Communications

Janus found Adam in the cafeteria at three in the afternoon, sitting across from a blond man she had never seen before. They were talking softly, leaning forward over the table.

She approached them. There was a slim black tablet between them, and on the screen was the sort of complicated medical information that usually only was seen in the individual rooms. The blond man was tapping at it, drawing Adam’s attention to different sections of the screen in turn. Adam glanced up at her as she approached.

“Hello, Dr. Dane,” he said.

The blond man looked up. He had a young face, definitely not older than 23 or 24, deep brown eyes framed by thick boyish lashes. Janus’s first thought was that he had some sort of hormone deficiency, because he looked like he had not aged properly from child to adult. Her next thought was that he looked familiar. He stood.

“Dr. Janus Dane?” he said, “pleased to meet you.” They shook hands, and it was like grasping a balloon that had been charged with static electricity. It took all her control not to recoil from the touch.

“You as well,” Janus replied. “You two look like you’ve got something interesting to talk about.”

“Dr. Pond was helping me build my program for rehabilitating the patients,” Adam said, “just in case I ever get the chance to make myself useful.”

“Well you’ve whipped most of the staff into shape already,” She joked.

“You excluded.”

“Perhaps one day,” She said, more playfully than she felt. Athletic wear was a problem for Janus. She worked out at home.

“Maybe we can get Dr. Dane’s opinion,” Dr. Pond said, “do you think it’s more likely that a single player will come through first or a group?”

She sat down at the table with them and clasped her hands in front of her. She thought about it.

“A group,” She said, “three or four.”

“That’s what I thought,” Adam said, “the chance of only one person making it is so slim--”

“You’re not taking into account group dynamics,” Dr. Pond protested, “It will be one player.”

“And I suppose you’re an expert,” Adam snapped back.

“Something like that.”

“Explain,” Adam said.

Dr. Pond sat down again and tapped at the slim device. It's screen came to life and he pulled up a page. It wasn’t statistics or diagrams or tables, it was a series of quotations and photographs.

“These,” he said, “are from back when the game was big.”

Janus leaned forward to take a look. The quotations were advertisements of a kind. They were pitches for servers, touting features and game types. The images were of structures. Some were castles, some boats, some towers that spiraled forever into the sky. All were squarish and blocky, but the fact that they looked so smooth indicated there size. Janus was duly impressed.

“These,” Dr. Pond said, “are from multiplayer servers. Notice the craftsmanship, the attention to detail? Very time consuming. Now these,” and here he brought up a different set of texts and pictures, “are from single player games.”

This set of pictures were of small buildings, cluttered with items, their gardens sprawling and animals tethered to wooden posts outside. The text quotations were fewer and much shorter, and mainly they asked for advice about items or achievements.

“See the difference?” Dr. Pond asked.

Janus nodded. She knew what he was getting at. It was so easy to waste time in a world so like their own with so many more possibilities. 

“Yes,” Adam said, “it doesn’t really make a difference anyway. Any workouts I design for a group of people can be accomplished by a single person just as easily.

“The argument was purely intellectual, I assure you, but I don’t like to be treated like I am wrong, especially when I am not.”

“Dr. Pond,” Janus said, “how long have I been working here?”

His smile turned a little mischievous, but she missed the flare of suspicion she had been expecting. “I’ve been here for about two months,” he said.

“That’s strange. I’ve never seen you around before.”

“They’ve got me locked in a backroom running data analysis. I haven’t been out and about very much.”

Pond. The name was familiar to Janus, and not because when he said it she flashed on muddy waters dotted with cattails. No, there was something else.

The slim black device dinged from the table, and Dr. Pond turned it to read the text on the screen. His eyebrows went up, “Break is over.”

“You’re on a schedule?” Adam asked.

“You aren’t?”

Janus clicked her fingers, “Benjamin Pond.” She said.

Dr. Pond froze. “Who?” he asked, trying to pretend he wasn’t nervous.

“He used to write essays with my mother.” Janus put her head in her hand. Unexpected nostalgia rushed her. She used to have a friend named Ben. A lot of people she knew were named Ben, it seemed, though categorizing the thing in the computer as a person was a stretch.

Dr. Pond frowned, “Forgive me for pointing this out, but I’ve never met your mother.”

Janus shrugged, “You’re too young to have written those papers anyway. It was at least twenty years ago most of them were published.”

“What journal were they in?” He asked with genuine interest.

She flushed with distant contact embarrassment and mumbled something about old message boards and forum posts under her breath. No respected journal hd ever published one of those essays. At last she said, “It’s out of print now. I have digital copies of the original text, if you want to read them. They may assist you in your data analysis.”

“Perhaps I’ll stop by later and look at them.”

“He’s not at all interested. He’s just being polite,” Janus thought. The was okay with that. The few people that came into contact with her family’s particular brand of crazy the better. She nodded anyway, not hiding the fact she’s skeptical. “We’ll let you get back to your work,” she said.

“See you sometime in the future,” he walked away, rounding a corner within seconds and disappearing.

Adam was looking at her strangely. Janus looked back at him, head still in her palm.

“What?” she asked.

“You sent him running.”

“Some people do that.” Dr. Pond had left his slim black device on the table where he had been sitting. Janus thought about taking it to him, but it was better to leave well enough alone.

The screen lit up and the familiar acid green text appeared. “You need to be more observant, Janus.”

She wondered how he had gotten into the device. It was probably connected to the internet wirelessly inside the building. 

“You almost caught me out,” Ben said.

She flipped the thing over, not willing to put up with his antics today. Harmless though he was, he could be extremely annoying.

“Dr. Dane,” Adam said.

“Janus,”

“Janus,” he took a breath, “that was Benjamin Pond. He told me about those essays before you got here.”

She frowned at him.

“We were talking about the physical therapy. Dr. Pond was suggesting I find a way to replicate the movements the players will already be familiar with, especially swordplay.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, “he can’t be The Dr. Pond. He’s too young. My mother was in her forties when she wrote those essays, and she said the other contributor was older than she was.”

“Maybe he’s acting. Maybe he’s a journalist or something trying to break a story.”

“I hope not. If any of this leaks, we’re going to sink like the Titanic.”

“The what now?”

She looked at him, appraising, and then said, “Just look it up.” She turned the black device so it was screen-up again.

“Fine,” the green text said, “ignore me.”

“Ben,” she said, “will you please show Adam what the Titanic is?”

“Of course.”

She went and got a fruit cup while Adam got his history lesson for the day, and when she came back he was leaning back in his chair looking stunned.”

“On the bright side,” he said, “there were some survivors.”

“Bright side depends on your point of view.” Janus popped open the little plastic container and speared a soggy tangerine with her fork, “If the survivor was the only one of their whole family, it might have been better to freeze.”

He shuddered but nodded.

“Dr. Pond,” she shook her head, chewing the fruit. “It doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

“So says she,” Ben typed, but no one read, “who knew once that there was only ever one Ben, and his last name certainly wasn’t Pond. You almost caught me, Janus. I thought you were smarter than that.”


	53. Hostile Preparations

Clarence reached the walled city at the most opportune of moments; just before nightfall. The moderate climate around the mountains had been kinder to him than the tundra in all ways. He had food and water and serviceable clothing, and most importantly, he had companions.

He was not as close to them as he was with Bit and Ivy, and it wasn’t even close to the brief intimacy he had shared with Player, but they were there. His companions had also been some of the first players killed in the game. They had told him about their experiences in the Nether, hanging in cages from the underside of the great fortress, watching Herobrine come and go. It was a chilling thought, that the monster that put them down became their warden.

But as they pelted out of the forest and fell to banging on the heavy wooden gates, Clarence reflected that there was a benefit to this captivity; it made them very eager to survive.

At last a helmeted head appeared over the gate. It tiled forward to see them and a hand was raised to keep the helmet on top of the head.

“What do you want?” It called down to them in an imperious and sarcastic voice that made Clarence itch just hearing it.

“Let us in!” He called back, his voice weak from the sprint from the forest.

“No can do,” the guard said with entirely too much enjoyment, “No opening the gates after nightfall. It’s the rules.”

“Screw the rules,” the man on Clarence’s right said, “We’ve got mobs on our back.”

“Well you’ve better turn around and face them then. Good luck.” The head disappeared.

Clarence spared a moment to swear and them turned around. There were no mobs in the immediate area, but there would be soon.

“Some sanctuary,” grumbled one of the people against the door, “For the people inside maybe.”

Clarence pounded on the door again with a closed fist, “Open the door!” He yelled.

“Working on it!” a woman’s voice replied from the other side.

The refugees exchanged glances, too shocked to reply. There were sounds of shouts muffled by the wood and then a mechanical grinding as the gate opened. The four figures on the other side fell forward into the sanctuary and the gate immediately reversed direction, shuddering closed with a “whump.”

“Sorry about Thomas,” the woman with long brown hair said “he’s always been a problem and with the influx of refugees we’re seeing it’s become difficult to rationalize letting everyone in.”

No one replied. They were bent double, breathing hard. Clarence forced himself upright and put his hands behind his head to allow his chest to expand. He looked at the woman.

She was wearing a cloak of some variety and thin fingerless gloves. Both were a regal purple that told him she was someone important. He lowered his arms.

“I’m Prague,” She addressed him directly to, “What brings you to our city?”

“Sanctuary,” one of Clarence’s companions said.

“From what exactly?” Prague moved her eyes to the other player.

“Herobrine,” They said.

She whistled, putting two fingers in her mouth. Two guards appeared, in the same uniform as the one on the wall. “More for the refugees quarters,” Prague said, “you two bring bring up the rear.” The guards gave curt nods. “Please follow me,” Prague turned and started walking.

Clarence, being the most recovered, was first behind her. The others straggled behind.

After a few moments of only their feet on gravel paths, Prague said, “You folks keep quiet about Herobrine, will you? He hasn’t come near here yet and we’ve managed to maintain order so far. The last thing we need is undue panic.”

“But we--”

“I know,” Prague turned to them, “and I take it very seriously, but if all our soldiers flee we will have nothing between us and him. We are prepared better than any other city, but one crazy rumor will unravel all our work.”

At last Clarence could stay quiet no longer. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. She seemed like the kind of person he should call ma’am.

“Yes?” Prague replied.

He lost his nerve somewhere between opening his mouth and asking the question so instead he said, “How did you get enough stone to build this wall?”

Prague reached out and trailed her fingers over the smooth rock. “It was a generous gift,” she said, “all that was asked in return was an open door. ‘Build a town, and that will be enough.’” The words obviously haunted her.

“A miner then?” Clarence asked. Who else could generate so much stone in such a short time. Obviously they had been high ranking. He wondered who else had that status other than…

“Yes sir,” Prague said, “Player is his name.”

Clarence stopped dead. Someone bumped into his back and yelped at the impact. “Player was here?” he asked, his voice rising, “how long ago? Where did you meet him?!”

Prague raised her hands to fend off his questions. She was peering at him through the twilight gloom. She pulled a torch off the wall and held it closer to Clarence’s face.

“Funny,” she said, “you don’t look like his type.”

He mumbled something about it not being that kind of relationship, aware that he was flushed scarlet up to his ears.

Prague laughed at him, but it was strained. “I take it you have something you want to talk about.”

“Yes,” he said, “if you know Player, and if you owe him a debt… He needs help.”

Prague nodded, “Come with me please. Everyone else, to the bunks.”

Clarence followed her as she stepped into the streets. The layout of the buildings wasn’t organic. They must have laid out the whole city by design, a little at a time as new people arrived.

They entered one of the buildings at random, and entered what appeared to be a lobby. Prague directed Clarence towards a waiting chair. “Eat if you like,” she said, “I’ll come back out to collect you in a moment.”

He took a handful of nuts from a bowl, but he’d only gotten through half of them before she reappeared and brought him down a long hallway into a room. It had a round table in the center surrounded by four chairs, three grouped together and one across the table from them. Without being asked, Clarence took the isolated chair. He looked at the meal that had been set on the table and tried to stop his stomach from growling.

Prague left again, and this time she didn’t return for close to ten minutes. Clarence was starting to nod off when she returned, flanked by two men. All three of them were wearing the purple cloaks. 

Clarence stood up fast, his chair grating across the wooden floor. Blood rushed to his head and the room turned dark around the edges from the sudden change in blood flow.

“Clarence,” Prague said, “these are Jericho and Troy. We’re the council of this town.”

“It’s an honor to meet with you,” Clarence said. His vision was clear again and he felt much more alert.

Jericho shook his hand warmly, “Prague tells me that you have news for us about our friend Player.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Troy interjected, “but aren’t you the one who sent him a letter several months ago.”

Jericho and Prague both looked surprised, and then the memory came back to them as well.

“I am,” Clarence admitted, though what he was admitting to and why it made him feel guilty he didn’t know.

“Then you can tell us where he has been and what he’s been doing since leaving us.”

“Not really. We got separated more than a month ago.”

“Separated how?” Prague asked.

Clarence told them the story. He told them about the strange pairing before the reset and how Player had found him, the journey into the mountains, how they had gotten separated there, and then seeing Player again and Herobrine destroying the village. He was very careful to paint Player as the victim at every step. According to the story he told, the relationship between them had been uneven and Herobrine controlling. Player had never really liked the man and been disturbed by his casual use of extreme violence. The one thing Clarence didn’t skew was how he himself had always seen Player: a gentle person out of touch with his own mind and body, and Herobrine had been no help whatsoever in helping the man come to terms with his own identity. He finished by telling them that the last he had seen of Player, he was being kidnapped by Herobrine.

After he finished there was a long silence. Clarence was sniffling a little, because he believed most of the story himself by that point. He rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes and tried his best to regain composure.

The builders looked at each other.

Prague stood and walked to the door of the chamber. She opened it to reveal two more guards standing there, “Wait for us outside,” she told Clarence.

He rose and went back out into the waiting room, leaving the food on the table completely untouched.

Prague sat back down with a sigh. She undid her cloak and threw it across the back of the chair.

“Do you believe him?” Troy asked.

Jericho was pulling off his purple gloves. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s hard to know.”

“His picture of the miner seems accurate,” Prague said.

“That doesn’t mean it’s complete,” Troy said.

“I want to believe it,” Jericho said, “but I think he’s lying about some things. I think the relationship that Player had with the monster looked a lot less like a hostage situation and a lot more like two people just getting along.”

“Why do you say that?” Troy asked.

“Because he was a diamond ranker, and diamond rankers are stubborn sons of bitches. Just look at us.”

Troy fell silent.

“Maybe,” Jericho continued, “Herobrine could have engineered such a situation if he was subtle about it and a true psychopath, but it would have taken him a while and Player would have had to have something to gain from it, and there just wasn’t enough time between everyone being paired up and the game resetting for that to happen.”

Prague interjected, “Hold on. The picture we were just given clearly resembles an abusive relationship. If it is true, we don’t know what was happening behind closed doors. Based on what I’ve heard about Herobrine he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt someone like that. Then the model might change.”

There was silence for a long time, and then Jericho got right to the heart of the matter. “It’s Clarence’s word against Joel’s,” he said, “either we have Player as a victim or as a conspirator in the death of another person.” 

Troy waved his hands in frustration. He was still wearing the gloves and cloak, “Let’s set aside the question of the past. What we need to decide is who we have to support and what our plan is to combat Herobrine when he arrives here.”

There was another long pause before Prague said softly, hating herself for every word, “If Clarence is lying, and the relationship between the monster and Player is one of friendship, he could be a useful hostage.”

“And if Clarence is telling the truth, then Player would be an invaluable source of information,” Troy offered.

“Either way,” Jericho concluded, “having the man inside our walls is a benefit. If nothing else, if all rumors are false, then he’ll be one more man between us and total destruction.”

“But where should we look?” Prague asked, “it’s a pretty big world, and by now he could be anywhere.”

“There’s an obvious starting point, at least,” Jericho said, “if we get our best men together, arrange substitutes for their shifts, we can get a party going in about a week, at a guess. Maybe longer, depending on how much food we give them.”

“So long?” Troy said, “we could do it faster.”

“I want them all trained with the new weapons first, so that we don’t have any… accidents.”

“That’s wise,” he admitted.

“Let’s not send Thomas,” Prague suggested, “he hates Player for whatever reason. We don’t need his testosterone in the mix.”

“Agreed,” both men chorussed.

“I’ll go put Clarence into the dormitories.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jericho said, “we should tell him our plans.”

Clarence stood when they entered the waiting room. He looked worried.

“We’re going to send a search party to look for him very soon,” Prague assured him. 

“Thank you,” Clarence said, “I don’t know how you’ll find him, but thank you.”

“We’ll start at his house,” she shrugged, “he’ll show up there eventually.”

Clarence didn’t reply. He had forgotten all about Player’s house somewhere in the area.

“I’d like to show you something,” Jericho said. He lead the man up a spiral staircase into a small circular room filled with chests.

“He had our blacksmiths trying to make new weapons,” Jericho said as he opened one of them, “about a week ago they discovered a recipe in the game that we thought might be useful for combating this very situation.” He took one of the weapons out of the box and showed it to Clarence. “What do you think?”

“I think it’ll do the trick,” Clarence felt his heart begin to pound. He knew that if Herobrine attacked this city, he would get a lot more than he had bargained for. What Jericho had just showed him changed the game entirely.


	54. Collateral Damage

“For once in my life I can write up an optimistic report.”

“Not me. I’m telling management I don’t like the guns being available.”

“And now my buzz is gone. Thanks.”

“I’m just being realistic. The whole situation is about to go nuclear, I can just feel it.”

“In more ways than one, I think you’re right.”

* * *

Player squirmed beneath the weight pinning him down. There was a knee lodged in the small of his back that he couldn’t dislodge no matter how hard he tried and a hand twisting his right arm behind him.

“I give up,” he said, letting the strain creep into his voice, “mercy!”

Herobrine tapped him between the shoulder blades with the end of his stick, and then stood and pulled Player to his feet. Player brushed himself off and scowled at the man.

“Was that really necessary?”

“No,” Herobrine said.

Player’s scowl deepened, but it twitched upward a moment later. “You have grass in your hair.”

Herobrine raised his hand and ran his fingers through his hair, releasing a shower of green blades. Must have come from the tumbling before he had managed to pin Player. It was getting more difficult to win these fights without going all out, but he did not want to risk hurting the human. At the same time, he could not let him win one of the sparring matches, because his pride would not allow it, and Player did not expect or want to win.

The human stretched over his head and leaned side to side. “Where’ve you been for the last day?”

“Looking around,” Herobrine fell into step beside him as they walked around the little lake back to Player’s campsite.

“Did you see anything interesting?”

“A city surrounded by stone walls.”

Player’s steps stuttered, and he stumbled. Herobrine steadied him.

“Do you know it?” Herobrine asked.

Player shivered as fingers ran up his back, enjoying the touch but knowing it belonged to the soon-to-be destroyer of the Walled City. He brushed the hand away, “I think so.”

“It’s nearby, if you want to visit.”

“I don’t think I could without warning them what’s on the way.”

“Is your conscience bothering you?”

Player looked at Herobrine, “A bit.” He considered reaching for his hand, but didn’t. There was a still a thin sheen of sweat on his skin, and he did not want his touch to be clammy. Then he processed what had been said, “How close by is it?”

Herobrine gave him a confused look, “Over the mountains.”

They both looked at the mountains, looming in the near distance. They were the wall between them and the rest of the world.

“My house is only a day’s travel from that city,” Player said, “we’re pretty close.”

Herobrine’s shoulders tensed. He didn’t respond.

Player chewed on his cheek. “I’m going to pack up. I can make some ground before nightfall.”

The man’s eyes widened. It was a momentary slip, but Player caught it. He knew why it had happened; it was the first time he had insisted they push on after a sparring match, but he was eager to get home.

“My house isn’t very…” he struggled for the right word and gave up. “The builders gave me flak for it, but I think you’ll like it.”

“I will,” Herobrine could not imagine a place he would like more.

“It’s set up a bit like your, uh, cell.” Player paused, “You called it a cell, right?”

“I did.”

“The garden will be ruined, but I can fix that.”

“You’re going to build the Nether Portal.”

Player exhaled loudly but not quite in a sigh. He started packing up his campsite. He was rolling up his sleeping bag when he said, “Why should I?”

Herobrine leaned his weight against a tree and crossed his arms. They had been over this. At least, he thought they had.

“Really, Brine. Why shouldn’t we move back into the house and stay there? It’s a nice place, a little boring maybe, but there’s a river nearby and its near the mountains--”

“Human,” Herobrine said softly, bringing the words to a halt, “you’d go crazy staying in one place.”

“There are mines. I could find new ones. I’d keep busy.”

“You’d go crazy.”

Player stuttered. He looked down and finished rolling up the sleeping bag.

“That’s why you left in the first place. You were bored.” Herobrine walked to him as Player put his pack on. 

“I left to find you,” Player muttered.

“You must have been very bored.”

That earned him a scowl, but Player’s eyes were sparkling with playfulness again. “You’re right,” he said, “I was going crazy.” He started walking, still going mostly West, scanning the forest for any familiar landmarks.

“You don’t want to spend your whole life here.” Herobrine followed him. He thought about that, years and years with Player in a little house tucked away in the forest. It sounded appealing, but he knew that neither of them would be able to stand it for long. It might be nice for a week or two.

“No,” Player said, “you’re right.”

“I’m right a lot,” now Herobrine was teasing him.

Player rolled his eyes, but didn’t respond.

Herobrine couldn’t resist. He reached out and touched the back of his wrist. Player flinched away from him.

“I told you,” he said, “I can’t. Not right now.”

He rubbed between Player’s shoulder blades, which he knew the human liked and made him relax. “Don’t worry. I shouldn’t do it without asking.”

“Soon,” Player said, and it sounded like a promise.

Herobrine shivered. He changed the subject. “Do you recognize anything yet?”

“No,” Player sighed, “I’ve been looking at trees for close to a month now. They all look the same to me.”

“What should we be looking for?”

“The river would be the easiest thing to spot, past that I’m not--”

There was a storm of barking from the trees to their right, the side Player was walking on. Herobrne turned in that direction at once, but even he didn’t have had time to react before the wolf shot out of the trees and barrelled into Player.

He went down with a shout, colliding with Herobrine on the way down but not knocking him over. The wolf was on top of him, paws on his shoulders and hips.

Herobrine drew the diamond sword and raised it, ready to take the animal’s head off. He was only halfway through the motion when he stopped.

Player was laughing, his hands ruffling the fur on the wolf’s neck. The animals warm pink tongue lapping at human’s face, and its tail was wagging furiously.

“Hello, Sam,” Player was using a baby voice on the wolf, “hello, good boy.”

The wolf was whining happily, his tail still wagging.

“Okay, boy, let me sit up,” Player pushed the animal back and sat up. Sam poked him with his nose, and Player grabbed him in a bear-hug, buried his face in the rough fur. “I missed you,” he said, “I missed you so much I didn’t realize it.” He felt tears sting his eyes. Sam licked his cheek, and Player laughed.

Herobrine felt a wave of jealousy toward the animal. He took a step away from the two of them, lowering the sword.

Player let the wolf go, and it bounded backwards, tail still wagging. It looked like it wanted to play. Then it saw Herobrine. The fur on its hackles rose, and the grin on its face turned into a snarl.

Herobrine raised the sword across his body in a guard position.

Player got to his feet, leaving his pack on the ground. He stepped between Herobrine and the wolf, “Sam,” he said, “this is Herobrine. Herobrine, this is Sam. He’s a friend of sorts.”

Neither the man nor the wolf looked placated. Sam’s growl deepened. Player turned to Herobrine and looked pointedly at the diamond sword.

The man’s face was twisted into a snarl, and Player realized he hadn’t see that expression for a long time, not since the attack on the farming village. Herobrine, he realized, felt threatened by the situation.

“Herobrine,” he said.

No reaction aside from Herobrine stepping to the right so he could see around Player to the wolf. A growl rumbled in the man’s chest to match the wolf’s.

“Herobrine!” Player said again, louder, and then, “Brine!”

His head turned towards Player a fraction of an inch, and he hesitated.

“It’s okay,” Player said, “Sam won’t hurt you unless you hurt him. Step behind me.”

Herobrine did what he said, and Player stepped back close to him. He put a hand on the diamond sword, on the edge of the blade, and pushed it down. Herobrine let the weapon drop, as much not to cut Player’s hand as to comply with his instructions.

“Sam,” Player said, “it’s okay. He’s a friend.”

The wolf’s ears moved up. Its tail wagged back and forth a little.

Player closed his hand over Herobrine’s clenched right hand. The man’s breathing hitched and his whole body tensed. “Relax,” he told Herobrine, “just relax. He won’t hurt you. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that,” Herobrine growled, but he let the sword fade back into his inventory.

“Do we have any meat?” Player asked. Sam was still bristling. He opened his own inventory. He had killed a chicken the night before. There was still a leg left. He took it.

“Sam,” he said, dropping Herobrine’s hand to pull a strip of meat off the bone. “Want a treat?”

The wolf’s hackles fell. His head cocked to the side, ears pricked up.

Player tossed the scrap of meat to him and pulled off another while Sam gulped it down. He crouched and held out the meat. The wolf ate the chicken out of his hand, its pink tongue tickling his fingers.

“Good boy,” Player murmured. He tore off another piece and held it out to Herobrine, “Your turn.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. He had apparently moved past being angry and defensive and was now just plain nervous.

“It’s okay,” Player said, “he’s not going to jump over me and get to you.”

Herobrine took the chicken from his hand and knelt beside him. He took a deep breath and offered the chicken to the wolf with a shaking hand.

Sam growled. Herobrine drew back, a growl of his own rumbling so close to Player’s body he could feel it. He started to stand up, but Player stopped him. He put his hand over Herobrine’s and moved it again toward the wolf. This time he sniffed at the food and then licked it out of his fingers.

“See?” Player said softly, “you’re okay.”

Herobrine spoke flatly “I don’t like animals.”

Player fed the wolf another piece of chicken. He thought of the white-eyed monsters in the farming village. “You use them well.”

“Wolves are different. I can’t reach them. They’re not passive.”

“Are you shaking?” Player turned his head to look at Herobrine.

“No,”

Player moved his hand to Sam’s head and rubbed the wolf’s ears. He growled happily, tail wagging again. “Good boy,” Player said.

Herobrine hesitated, but he put his hand on the wolf’s head along with Player and rubbed his fingers through the fur. Player smiled.

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” Herobrine said.

“Herobrine is afraid of dogs? No one would believe me.”

Herobrine snorted, “I am not.”

“Right.”

“I can deal with wolves.”

“But?”

In response Herobrine stood up. He gave the wolf one last rub and walked away.

Player didn’t follow. He had moved down Sam’s neck to his shoulders and had come across a ridge of raised tissue.

“Come here, Sam,” he said, shifting the wolf around to look at the strange mark. The mark was clearly visible. The fur that had grown in around and on top of it was sparse and coarser than the surrounding fur. It was a scar, puckered and freshly healed.

“Brine,” Player said.

Herobrine returned so quickly that he must have been waiting for such a call.

“Look,” Player said, indicating the scar.

Sam growled as Herobrine bent over him, but Player put a hand on his muzzle and held it forward to prevent any misunderstandings.

“What made it?” He asked.

Herobrine felt over the area, determining the size and shape of the wound. His eye flashed brighter for a second.

“A knife,” he said, “not a sword, slashed along the shoulder. It looks like it was inflicted in self-defence.” He looked at Player, “I’m not the only one who doesn’t like wolves.”

“I didn’t do this.”

“No. It’s too new.” Herobrine stood.

Player released Sam’s nose and retrieved his pack. He moved close to Herobrine, both for protection and comfort. The wolf growled at the man again, then trotted into the trees.

“We should follow him,” Player said, “he’ll lead us back to the house.”

The diamond sword had reappeared in Herobrine’s hand. He sighed, “If we must.”

Player stayed beside him. Herobrine was looking left and right, scanning the whole area. He took his pickaxe off his back and held it by his side. He didn’t have time to open his inventory and retrieve the iron sword. He didn’t know how much help he’d be in a fight anyway.

Sam ran back to them and bumped his head into Player’s leg. He got a scratch behind the ears before bounding ahead again.

“I don’t think anyone is nearby,” Player said, “or Sam would be acting differently.”

Herobrine didn’t react to his words at all. Player put his pick back on his back after a moment and moved ahead of him.

The forest was growing more familiar, but he was uncertain which way the house was until he saw a tree with a double-wide trunk that he remembered distinctly. He turned to his left and broke into a jog. The wolf raced him through the remainder of the trees, breaking out of them into an open field and scattering a group of chickens as he went.

Player stopped at the edge of the forest. He stared in disbelief at the rubble and ashes where his house had once been. Who could have done this? Who would have done this if they had the chance? At least he knew now why Sam had a scar.

He heard a rustle of leaves as Herobrine caught up, still with sword drawn and braced for action.

Player spoke without turning, “Did you do this?”

“Do what?”

“This,” Player gestured to the burned-out shell, the ripped up garden, the broken anvil and smashed pottery scattered over the grass. “Did you do this?!”

There was quiet for a long moment. “No,” Herobrine said.

Player turned to face him, “Are you lying?”

The man flinched. He took a step back. “No,” he said. He sounded hesitant, but Player wasn’t sure this was a lie either.

“Who else would have done this?!” He demanded.

“Why would I lie?” Herobrine countered, “what would I have to gain?”

“It would preserve our friendship,” Player said, “if you managed to pull it off.”

“Human, if it had been me that had burned this house down, the wolf would not have escaped with only a scar.”

Sam pushed his nose into Player’s hand. He looked down at the wolf, then back up at Herobrine. There wasn’t a hint of dishonesty in that face. There was a smudge of dirt on his chin and a single blade of grass still caught in his hair, but that only gave a sweet contrast to the rugged features Player had become accustomed to seeing.

“I’m sorry,” Player said.

“I don’t know who would have done this,” Herobrine said, “I’ve been watching most of the settlements, but no one stands out to me.”

Player scratched Sam’s ears, “It feels like the whole world is against us, doesn’t it, boy?” He walked out into the yard.

Herobrine stayed in the treeline. He watched Player walk to the ruins of the house, but the human didn’t go up the path to the remains of the door. He circled around to the back of the house.

Player ran his hand along the exposed stone, feeling the familiar texture. He came to the door in the rock, set back two blocks. It was intact. He pushed it open. The room was untouched.

The air inside was stale and there was a coating of rock dust on everything, but the bed was still there and a single chest of miscellaneous supplies against one wall. Player walked in, threw his pack onto the chest, and let himself fall onto the bed. A puff of dust rose up, but compared to his sleeping bag, the bed was heavenly. He crossed his arms on the pillow and sighed with pleasure.

Sam poked him in the side with a cold nose.

“Thanks, Sam,” Player sat up. He moved his pack off the chest and opened it. There wasn’t much inside, just a couple iron ingots he had forgotten about and some extra coal. He took the coal and started the furnace going to drive out the damp and chill.

The wolf started growling behind him.

“Hello, Brine,” he said.

“This is cozy.”

“There’s a bed and walls and a roof. It’s better than the sleeping bag on the ground.”

Sam’s growl deepened, and Player looked back. The wolf was standing at the door with Herobrine on the other side of the jam. Both of them were puffed up.

“Stop that,” he said to the wolf, giving his tail a tug to make the order sink in.

Sam turned on him, the snarl only dropping a little bit.

“You’re a bully,” Player told him matter of factly, “leave Brine alone. He’s not going to hurt you.”

The wolf looked skeptical.

Player looked at Herobrine, “Do you have anything he’d like to eat? If you feed him he’ll like you more.”

“Maybe,” Herobrine said, “I could go find something.” He stepped into the room, looking left and right. Sam snapped his teeth closed an inch from his leg.

“Sam!” Player shouted at him. He grabbed the wolf by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from Herobrine. The animal was strong, and now he was being outright aggressive. He twisted and snapped in Player’s hands.

“Back up,” he said to Herobrine. The man got out of the way, and he walked past him, carrying Sam bodily. He thrust the dog outside and put him down.

Sam turned to look at him, head down.

Player shut the door on him. “I’m sorry,” He said to Herobrine, going back into the room. “Did he get you?”

“No,” Herobrine was shifting back and forth on his feet. “Has he done that before?”

“Never,” Player sighed, “he usually stays away from visitors.”

Sam scratched at the door.

Player sat down on the bed. He leaned forward and said, “Forget about staying here. I’ll build the portal and we can get out of here in a few days.”

Herobrine’s eyebrows went up. He sat on top of the chest, “Really?”

Player nodded, “obviously someone knows this place is here.”

“You think that they’ll be a problem?”

“I’d rather not get into that situation,” Player said, “never mind the mess it would make. I don’t want to get cornered without you here.”

“You’re good with a sword now,” Herobrine said.

“Not two against one good,” Player said, “and it was definitely two people at least. One to get bitten, the other one to use the knife on Sam.” He sighed, “Maybe that’s why he’s so aggressive now.”

“You might surprise yourself,” Herobrine pushed himself off the chest and sat beside player on the bed. “You can definitely deal with the mobs in the Nether.”

“We’ll see about that soon,” Player opened his inventory and took the obsidian out. He held it, rubbing the sharp edges of the blocks carefully. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and not have to go far to find a fortress.”

Herobrine was watching him. “You don’t want to rebuild your house?”

Player shook his head.

Herobrine put his arm around Player’s shoulders. He gave him a squeeze. “The whole world isn’t against you,” he said, “just a few people in it.”

Player smiled, but it was a brittle thing. “I’ll build the portal tomorrow. It shouldn’t take more than a day to get what I need to.”

“I’m not going to help you with that,” Herobrine said, “it’ll make it too easy.”

“I know. I do wish I could be fireproof like you when I go in there. I’ve never been to the Nether, but it sounds like being lava-proof would be really helpful.”

Herobrine thought for a minute. “I could do that,” he said.

Player looked at him, “Really?”

“There’s a potion for it.”

Player rolled his eyes, “It’ll probably taste like rotten meat.”

“That’s the price you pay for being fireproof. And it will only last a couple hours at most.”

Player took the book, now well read and beginning to show wear, out of his bag. “I’ll save it for the blazes then.” 

He set the book and obsidian down on the bed and turned to Herobrine. He put his arms around the man and his head on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

Herobrine hugged him back without speaking, knowing that just the contact was enough of a response.

Player pulled away after a few seconds. He looked troubled. “What happens when I beat the game?” he asked.

Herobrine looked away. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m not sure,” he said.

“Have you beat it?”

He nodded, “A long time ago.”

“What happened to you?”

“I woke up back at my original spawnpoint in the world,” Herobrine said honestly, “and everything continued as usual.”

Player frowned, “that’s a bit anticlimactic.”

“It wasn’t. I sat under a tree for a whole week and just thought about it.”

“If I do beat it, will I become like you?”

Herobrine looked at him. Player’s eyes were very close and they gleamed with violet reflections around the edges. “Maybe. I don’t know what will happen to you.”

“Well that’s something to look forward to.”

Sam started whining from outside.

“Okay,” Player said, “tomorrow I’ll build a portal and you make a potion, and the next day we’ll make some progress.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Do you want some help getting past Sam on your way out?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Herobrine said, “I can make it. See you tomorrow.”

Player turned to look at him, but the room was empty. He rolled his eyes, but that was Herobrine’s way of extracting himself from a situation he didn’t like and he literally couldn’t stop him from doing it. He stood up and opened the door for Sam.

“Look what you did,” he said to the wolf, “my friend left because of you.”

The animal looked apologetic. He rolled onto his back and exposed his stomach and throat to Player.

“Don’t say sorry to me,” Player scolded him, “I’m not the one you almost bit.” He stepped over the wolf and walked toward the garden. Maybe there was something edible left on the plants.


	55. Hidden Names

From the Secret Notes of Ana Dane. April 18, 2030.

This is what I know about Bindings. Monsters, non-humans, can bind. Bindings are almost instant from the first moment of eye contact and they are very strong, but they can be ignored or shunned by one or both parties. They are something similar to attraction, physical and emotional, but whether or not they involve love I cannot tell. From what I have seen they certainly seem to.

It is possible to break a binding, but it is painful and traumatic and usually involves the death of one involved with the relationship.

Some non-humans can have multiple simultaneous bindings, but usual these lesser bindings are one-sided and symptomatic of a deep psychological issue. 

And, most importantly, humans can bind and non-humans can bind to them. In fact, it is very common. As it was explained to me, the best method for dealing with such a binding is, “Run as fast as you can the other way and find a decent stripper bar” (As suave as the non-humans can be, they are still mostly men). It seems these connections are more painful than anyone would like to admit, though supposedly more than one such relationship has come to fruition.

* * *

Herobrine cracked a block of netherrack in half using his sword. He gave it a kick. He was not angry--he had not been angry in what seemed like forever--he was frustrated. He shouldn’t have told Player he would make a potion of fire-resistance. This whole time he had been trying to remain as neutral as possible, and now he was giving outright assistance. He should told Player to make his own potion, maybe given the recipe, but no. He had gazed a little too long into those strange blue-violet eyes and melted. Player needed to warn people about that possibility. It could lead to some strange places.

He pulled the sword out of the netherrack and sat down on another block. A pigman wandered over and examined his sword and the cracked block. Herobrine watched it, thinking about the wolf. He would drop by one of the farming villages before going back and help himself to a steak. Maybe he would take three and they could all get a meal out of it.

He stood up and started walking. He wasn’t going anywhere specific. He just needed a magma cube. His own personal plans had gone awry, it was true, but there was no way he was breaking a promise to Player in order to right them. A potion of fire resistance had been requested and it would be delivered.

He was so deep in his own thoughts he almost walked right into several pigmen as he made his way down to the ocean of lava across the Nether floor. Finally he shook himself and looked up. His fortress loomed above him, the size from this angle perturbing. He checked, mentally, how far he was away from Player in the overworld. It was a long way. He had gravitated here when he entered the nether, not arrived from convenience. 

The players in cages had undoubtedly seen him by now. He had been too lost in musings to think about that. It was betraying much of his inner self to these people. He still could not work up the mental fortitude to get mad at himself. Instead there was just a dull ache in his chest that silenced everything else.

“Brine,” he said to himself. He sat on a block overlooking the lava sea and put his head in his hands. He wasn’t thinking about keeping up appearances anymore. “I have to tell him,” he said, “No: I want to tell him. I shouldn’t, but I want to.”

He imagined Player pinned on the ground beneath him, but this time they hadn’t been fighting. He scrambled away from the thought, but it would not leave him alone. It would not have been half as painful if that was all it was: Player pinned beneath him and then nothing in either direction. What he had instead was Player pinned for a few moments, and then Player leaning into him, his head on his shoulder, and then Player opening a door, his face smeared with rock dust, giving a greeting first verbally and then physically. It was killing Herobrine to have all this in his head.

Most infatuations, he knew, faded quickly, especially when the object of affection was very near. This thing had only been growing. Surely he owed it to Player to tell him what was going on inside his head.

“Brine,” he said to himself again and shook his head, “why did he have to give me another nickname?”

Way above him, the people in the cages were watching.

“What’s happening?” someone asked.

“He’s just sitting there.”

“It looks like he’s thinking about something.”

“What would he think about? Besides which village to destroy next, I mean.”

A red-headed man several rows back from the walkway said, “We don’t know what his life is like. Maybe he’s got someone to worry about.”

There were several harsh laughs, “Right,” someone said, “because Herobrine inspires so much trust.”

“Wait,” someone pointed down, “what’s he doing?”

Herobrine raised his head in time to catch movement within the lava. He lunged forward and plunged both of his arms into the molten rock up to his shoulders. He pulled currents through the liquid, fumbling for what he had seen below the surface. The heat from the lava was intense, and even though it did not actually hurt him, it made him sweat.

His hands hit something halfway solid, something that flexed under his touch. He braced his legs and pulled it up out of the lava. The little magma cube glupped at him unhappily, offended at being removed from its home.

Herobrine brought it close to him instinctively and hugged it against his chest. It seemed like the right thing to do, but he realized that he was probably just projecting his own desires onto the mob. Regardless, it seemed to work. The red-hot mob went docile. It nibbled at one of his thumbs, but since it didn’t have any teeth it wasn’t a problem.

There was only silence among the cages for a long time, everyone squinting through the heat haze to make out what the blue figure by the lava was doing. Herobrine tossed the magma cube in the air a couple times, a smile spreading over his face as it glorped at him. He caught it two handed and gave it a pat before setting it down.

“That,” one of the imprisoned players said, “was disturbingly cute.”

There was a general mumble of agreement from those nearby. 

Herobrine heard neither of these things. He was watching the little cube bounce around his feet, bumping into his legs as it begged to be lifted up again. He reached for the diamond sword and gripped it tightly as it formed in his hand.

He knelt and used his free hand to stop the cube’s bouncing. It started nibbling his fingers again, and this time he didn’t stop it. He raised the sword vertically and positioned it carefully.

He did hear the collective yell that went up from the imprisoned players as he started to lower it. He stopped, looked up at them.

They stared back.

Herobrine considered fulfilling their expectations, but right then he had no stomach for it. Why not show them?

He gave them a salute with his sword, and rotated himself and the magma cube so they could see what he was doing, then he positioned the sword again the made a very shallow cut in the red and black outer skin of the cube. It didn’t feel the cut. It had no nerves.

He held the flap of skin back with the fingertips of the hand that the slime was gnawing on and put the sword down. Then he dipped his fingers into the inside of the slime. The gunk inside sucked him in. It was greenish and giving off an odor like pond stink and burning rubber. Player was right; the potion was going to taste awful.

He rolled the edge of his palm along the slime until he had a round handful of it, then removed his fingers and let the flap of skin return to its place.

The slime in his hands was shot through with specks of gold. Blaze powder, he knew, or something very similar. To make it congeal and to remove the excess from his hand, he dipped it into the lava. It hissed and popped, but did not burn.

The magma cube had already sealed closed, but he rubbed some of the molten rock onto the place he had cut anyway just to be safe. He gave it a pat before straightening up. The cube started frolicking around his feet again while he worked the ball of slime to make it less sticky. It still smelled like rancid leaves and burning rubber, but now it wouldn’t stick to his fingers.

“It doesn’t look like it hurt,” one of the players said.

“Do we really care whether or not it did? He certainly hurt me.”

“Can we all just,” the red-headed took a deep breath, “See what happens next.”

No one found this disagreeable. Herobrine was walking up the netherbrick pathway towards them and they had long ago made it a policy to shut up when he was nearby.

The magma cube bounced at his heels, desperately trying to keep pace with his strides. He was tossing the stuff he had extracted from it in one hand like a baseball. Several times he passed out of their sight as he climbed staircases. The dead players exchanged looks as he approached.

Finally Herobrine walked between them, glancing left and right. Today his face was a mask of quiet amusement, partially a reaction to their obvious confusion about the magma cube.

“What would they think if they saw me with Player?” he asked himself, and that thought was even more amusing than their currant disturbed expressions.

He looked past the initial row of cages and spotted the red-headed man. He recognized him immediately and stopped. He said nothing, made no move, only looked at him steadily. That communicated everything he needed to communicate.

“What are you doing back here so soon?” Herobrine said with his eyes.

The red-head shifted under his gaze. He flashed on the massive tree, the chicken, and the poorly-placed axe swing and felt a flush rise to his already warm cheeks.

Herobrine read all he needed to in that expression and turned away.

Another player yelped and he turned to look at the source of the disturbance. It was a woman with short mousy brown hair. Her cage was very close to the pathway, and the magma cube was trying to get over the fence to reach her. It had gone into hostile mode and was intent upon killing the woman and then any other player it could reach.

Herobrine started back towards the cube, intending to grab it and carry it up into the fortress. He did not know why he should feel so attached, but he did. Just as he took a step, the cube gave one immense effort and cleared the fence. It balanced on top for a moment before throwing itself at the cage. 

The woman pressed back away from it, but she didn’t need to worry. The cube didn’t have the strength to reach her. It hung in the air for a moment and then dropped out of sight over the edge of the walkway. The players near it tracked its progress down to the lava below, their heads moving in tandem.

Herobrine crossed to the railing, forcing himself not to hurry. He leaned out over the edge just in time to watch the magma cube hit the lava with the faintest of plops. A moment later it bobbed back to the surface, venting angry bubbles of molten rock but unharmed.

He sighed. “Dumber than a block of wood,” he thought, but the cube he done its job and he had no right to complain. He turned away from the spectacle.

The players said nothing until he was inside the fortress itself. There was silence for several seconds after he was gone.

Someone said, “Shit.”

There were several laughs.

Herobrine wasted no time in getting to the the lab space. He set the Awkward Potions brewing and then went to check on his lifeline. To get there he went through the living quarters.

He hated those rooms even more now. Their opulence and rich colors looked shabbier than they had before. It was a selfish space, dedicated to no one but himself and offering comforts of only the shallowest kind. He thought again of Player, fish caught fresh out of lakes and peaches picked right off of trees and a place by a campfire. He looked again at the room and almost set it all aflame with a word. He didn’t because this place stood as a reminder to him. “This,” it said, “is what you almost became.”

Herobrine shuddered. He hurried through the room and to the lab space. He set the Awkward Potion brewing and went to check on his lifeline.  The tiny room at the back of the fortress had been closed for a long time. When he cracked it open, the hinges creaked audibly. Blue radiance spread over the floor as he peered into the room. A moment later he closed the door again. It was just as it had been when it was first given to him.

“I’m going to use it,” he said aloud to himself, “I’ll let him go, but there’s no saying about following him.”

He returned to the lab and finished the potion. In his opinion the sulphur was an improvement over the rotten smell, but he knew Player was going to be disgusted. Well, he had asked for the thing. If he complained, Herobrine would point that out.

He backtracked out of the building and down the path, the bottle stored safely in his inventory. He didn’t even look at the players in the cages this time. He was too excited to get back to Player.

He stopped as he was about to return to the overworld, remembering his promise about bringing something for the wolf. It chafed to delay his return, but he had promised. He redirected to somewhere he could find meat laying around.

Player was looking up at the frame of the Nether portal. It was taller than he had expected somehow, and the greasy black shine of it unnerved him. It loomed over the whole yard.

“This thing will let me into the Nether,” he said, “I’m going to walk into hell itself in order to kill a few mobs, get a few items, and beat the game.” It was not a bad prospect. He found that he enjoyed the implied challenge. The only thing that could make this day better than it currently was would be Herobrine’s return. Unfortunately, it was looking like this would be one of those days where his companion didn’t return. He had been absent all morning and the whole night before.

Player had cleaned up the yard and picked through the burned rubble of the house before starting the Nether Portal in the hopes that Herobrine would return before he had to build it. He had discovered that the fire at the house had been recent and the destruction of his pottery had not been absolute--he had found an intact bowl and cup nestled in a thick patch of grass--but otherwise he could count the morning wasted.

It had felt good to sleep in a real bed again. He had to admit that at least.

As he stood there thinking, Herobrine emerged from the woods behind him. He stayed where he was, just looking at Player. Not so long ago he had told himself that the man was not beautiful. He had not changed his mind. Player was not beautiful; he was handsome. His features did not quite match some of the former gladiators’ in terms of ruggedness, but he was more approachable, quicker to smile and softer of voice and charming in a way Herobrine still couldn’t quite grasp. He might have been considered flawless by many except he was so self-conscious that it showed in his body language. He put his arms behind him when he was standing still and touched his pickaxe constantly, and when he was walking, he shrank down a little as if to make himself less noticeable. Even right then he was shifting on the spot, like he was only a second away from fleeing.

Herobrine didn’t know how to soothe those nerves, but he had been trying.

“It looks good,” he said as he approached.

Player turned to him, a sweet smile spreading across his face. “Hey Brine,” he said, turning away from the portal. He waited while Herobrine closed the distance between them, watching the man’s face for any hint of negative emotions. There was a nervous set about his jaw, but Player was nervous too. The house being burned down was enough to make them both feel unsettled.

Herobrine said something too quietly for Player to hear. It sounded like a phrase in his strange broken language.

“What?” he asked.

“Where’s the wolf?” Herobrine asked. It was not what he had said and they both knew it.

Player turned his head but couldn’t see Sam anywhere. “No idea,” he said.

Herobrine sighed. “Too bad,” he said, “I brought him a steak.”

“You what?”

“I brought him a steak.”

Player looked offended, “You brought the wolf a steak?” he repeated again, like he couldn’t quite believe it.

Herobrine smirked “Did I say I only had one?” He walked past Player and ran a hand over the obsidian of the portal.

Player let his own smile quirk his lips.

“I have your potion too.”

“Thank you,” Player said, “I know you didn’t want to make it.”

Herobrine looked back at him, his white eyes flashing. “It was that obvious?” He let a bottle collect in his hand from black snow and crossed to hand it to Player. It was a strange translucent pinkish-orange color that made Player feel sick just looking at it.

He took the potion. “You were frowning,” he said simply.

There was a storm of snarling and the wolf came charging out of the bushes. All the fur on his back was standing up and his teeth were bared in anger. He made a beeline toward Herobrine. Player stepped between them. The wolf stopped short and tilted to head at Player. It seemed to be asking why the man was protecting such a thing as Herobrine.

“Those steaks might be useful now,” Player said.

Herobrine retrieved the steaks. They were bundled in a sheet of thick paper. He opened it and took out the top steak. It was the cheaper cut of meat of the two, but he didn’t think the wolf would care. He lifted it out of the package and held it out where Sam could see it.

The wolf’s hackles fell and it's tail wagged hesitantly. Herobrine tossed the meat at it. The animal snapped it out of the air and dashed off into the trees with the meat in his mouth.

“You’re welcome,” Herobrine said. He crouched down and wiped the juices off his hand in the grass, then refolded the package and handed it to Player. He opened it partially and looked inside.

“Are you staying to eat?” he asked.

Herobrine shook his head. He stepped up into the portal frame and stretched his arms wide to touch either side. The obsidian was slick and greasy under his hands. He followed the shape of the structure all the way around, tilting his head backwards to trace the lines in the material.

Player was doing his nervous shuffle in the background. He could hear him.

“Why do you call me that?” Herobrine asked.

“Call you what?”

“‘Brine,’” He turned around, still standing on the obsidian.

Player grinned at him. It was his teasing grin, and for a moment the spirit came into his eyes. They caught a glint of sunlight and turned it violet. “Because,” Player said, “you’re good at drawing out infection but you sting like hell while you do it.”

Herobrine just stared at him. This was one of those times where he saw in Player the person he was under all of the uncertainty. He sat on the obsidian block and gave the human a long look, “What infection?”

Player shrugged. He put the paper wrapped steak into his inventory and sat down beside Herobrine. The obsidian was too hard to be comfortable on, but he stayed put.

“Our infection,” he said, “the people here. Being stuck in this place.”

Herobrine was looking at the remains of the house. It had been a little one room thing, he could see that, and packed full of Player’s life. He lifted one knee and put his chin on it.

“If you’re doing what you say you’re doing, that is,” Player amended.

“I’m doing it,” Herobrine said, “Their towns are in ruins.”

Player shuddered but didn’t rise in disgust or anger. “My infection too,” he said instead.

Herobrine uncurled and reached across to rub him between the shoulder blades where he got tight from sparring or mining. Player did not know how he had picked up on it, but the relief it brought was welcome. 

Sam came back out of the forest and trotted up to them. He set his bloody muzzle on Herobrine’s knee and looked up at him through yellow doggish eyes.

The voice Herobrine used on the animal was comparable to the one Player used, but not as high-pitched. “Oh so now you like me,” he said.

Sam thumped his tail on the ground.

“Or do you just think I’ve got another steak?” The wolf tilted his head. He had picked up what that word meant.

Player patted the stone beside him and Sam walked to him, offered his ears for a scratch. Player took his head in both hands and rubbed over his whole head.

“Why do you call me ‘human,’” he asked after a moment.

Herobrine curled back into a partial ball. He snorted, “because ‘Player’ is so generic it can’t be your real name.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Player said.

“It just doesn’t feel right,” Herobrine growled, “‘Player’ is the default name for everyone in this game. Everyone is ‘Player.’ It’s like by the time they got around to putting your name in they were so short on time they just skipped you.”

Player didn’t respond. His face was red with anger. It was cheapening to hear that. He wasn’t a mistake, even if sometimes he felt like he was. “And I suppose you’ve got a better name for me,” he said, not bothering to hide his emotions.

“I do, and it’s not ‘human,’” Herobrine tilted his head, “you’re mad at me.” It was not a question.

“I’m mad that you think who I am is generic,” Player said. The wolf growled low in his throat.

Herobrine’s face softened. “I don’t think that. I think you name is lacking.”

Sam growled again, more threatening. The fur along his spine had risen again.

Herobrine continued, ignoring the animal, “I’ve called a lot of people ‘player,’ too many. Like I said, it’s the default. The first players...all they had was that name.” His eyes flashed, “and they all looked the same too. The same face over and over.” He looked up at Player, “you’ve got that face too, but it suits you.”

Player wasn’t angry anymore. Confusion had wrinkled his face up, “So before me and before everyone else, there were other people here? For how long?”

“I don’t know how long, and there were never people like there are now and no one like you.”

“But many of them looked like me and had the same name as me.”

“They looked similar, not identical.” They were not nearly so round.

“So when you call me Player, my name, what you see in your head is everyone who has ever shared those traits.”

Herobrine nodded. He was glad player was getting this.

“And ‘human’ is somehow better than that.” He finished, a hint of bitterness coming back into his voice.

Herobrine shrugged, but he was seeing the point of Player’s argument as well and it was making him guilty, “I’ll call you by your name,” he said.

Player shook his head, “I never really liked Player. It doesn’t feel right, but ‘human’ is so…” he struggled for a moment, “it’s like I’m just another face in a crowd.”

Herobrine laughed, his head bobbing forward as he did, “We both have the same argument,” he said, “just from different angles.” Then he said, “I’ll call you Player from now on.”

Player had to smile. It was hard not to when Herobrine laughed. The wolf put his head against his leg and pushed, and Player ruffled up his neck fur. Herobrine ran his hands over the animal’s back.

Sam flopped onto the ground and rolled over to solicit a tummy rub from whoever was willing to give it. Neither of the men moved.

“Are you going to stay for a while?” Player asked.

“No,” Herobrine sighed, “I didn’t get anything done last night.” He paused for a moment, “I don’t want to leave if we’re not okay.”

“We’re okay,” Player said, “I’ll just have to think about my name.”

“And me mine,” Herobrine stood up. He started to walk away, then turned back to Player and said, “You should get some cobblestone to make guide pillars with.”

“I was going to,” Player said, rolling his eyes, but Herobrine meant well. He knew that.

“And don’t uncap that potion until you’re ready to drink it,” He advised, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll be here,” Player said, reaching down to rub the wolf’s stomach.

When Herobrine was gone he said to the animal, “At this rate I’m never going to get up the nerve to really talk to him.”

Sam thumped his tail against the ground.

“You’re no help,” Player told him, scratching around his throat, “don’t snarl at my friends.”

Sam bounced to his feet and, before he could pull away, licked him on the cheek.

“I love you too,” Player laughed, wiping the saliva off his face with the back of one hand. He stood up and walked back to the bunker to get torches. Herobrine was right about needing cobblestone. “Player,” said to himself, “well it’s better than ‘human.’” He stopped and looked down at the wolf, “Did he really say that he had another name for me?”

Sam confirmed it.

“Well,” Player said, “I’d better not ask him until after the Nether, or I might be too pissed off to go.”


	56. Going Deeper

“Crack open the champagne, we have one in the Nether!”

“You mean not dead and in the Nether?”

“Perfectly healthy and alive and moving quite a bit. Looks like we’re making progress at last!”

* * *

Player could not believe it, but Herobrine was doting. He could sense the tension from the man, and it was starting to rub off.

“Do you have enough extra water?” Herobrine asked.

Player sighed, “Yes.” He had so much extra water he was worried about running out of space for it.

“And you found food?”

“Yes.” Bread from the remains of his garden, fruits from the surrounding forest. He had not been able to get any meat, but he could go without. He was standing against the stone wall of the bunker, and Herobrine was pacing back and forth in front of him.

“And cobblestone?”

“Brine,” Player said, “I have everything. Are you that worried about me?”

Herobrine stopped pacing. He turned his head and looked at Player. He didn’t say anything, but he did look worried. He looked scared.

“I’ll be fine,” Player soothed, “I’m as prepared as I can be.”

Herobrine stepped to him, only two paces in the tiny bunker. He put a hand on the crafting table behind Player. A jolt shot up his spine, and he pressed away as far as he could.

“Just be careful, okay, Player?”

Player shivered. His name didn’t sound right in that voice. He pushed that thought down, “I will. I don’t know what else I’d do.”

“Sometimes there are cliffs you can’t see coming, and they end in lava, so don’t run.”

“Herobrine,” he said, “I’ll be fine.”

Herobrine caught him in a hug, squeezing so tight it was almost painful. For a few seconds Player found his head on Herobrine’s shoulder, warmth spreading through his body as he was pressed close, and then the man stepped back. Player almost followed him, tried to stay close to that intoxicating warmth, but didn’t. There wasn’t time right then. If he didn’t go through that portal today he never would.

“Flint and steel?” Herobrine asked.

“Right here,” Player picked them up from the crafting table.

“You won’t need that in the Nether at least,” Herobrine said, but his voice was still strained.

“Let’s get on with it,” Player said.

He lead the way out of the bunker and walked to the portal. The oily black of the obsidian made him shiver, and he guessed it was because Herobrine was nervous. Herobrine had never been nervous before. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who should be nervous. 

Player gripped the flint and steel and leaned over to one of the obsidian blocks. A hand gripped his arm and moved him back a step so that his body wasn’t leaning through the frame. Herobrine didn’t make any explanation.

Player gritted his teeth and struck a spark off the flint. It touched the black stone but instead of fizzling out or catching on fire it caused a purple substance to rise out of the stone. It filled the whole portal in less than a second, the wind making it move and bringing from it intense heat and the smell of sulfur.

Player stepped away from the thing. He was suddenly afraid and he did not know why. Shivers were going up his back.

“Player?” Herobrine asked.

He looked at him, and saw for the first time in a long time the monster looking back instead of the man he’d come to trust. 

Player shuddered and closed his eyes, took a deep breath. When he opened them, Herobrine was back to Herobrine, concern creasing his stoic features. He smiled at him. “I just step through it?”

Herobrine reached a hand out and stroked the purple substance. It rippled under his fingers, pale grays and pinks marring the purple shean. “Yes,” he said. He pushed off the obsidian and walked to Player, and hugged him again. The embrace lasted longer this time, long enough for Player to return it and use the contact to steady himself.

“Player,” Herobrine said, and there again was the discomfort of that name, the way it just felt wrong, “If you manage to die in there, I want you to know that none of it is my doing.”

“What do you mean?” Player asked, pushing back against him, freeing himself from the strong arms around him.

“The way the players who die are imprisoned,” Herobrine was talking fast like they were on a schedule, “I didn’t make it like that.”

“I’m not going to die,” Player said firmly.

Herobrine smiled, “No,” he agreed, “you aren’t.”

“I’ll be back before dark.”

He got a nod in return, but nothing more concrete.

Player took a breath and stepped up onto the obsidian. His toes brushed the purple stuff and it seemed to lean away from him. He put out a hand, made to press it against the barrier, but it gave way with a pop and he was jerked forward into the purple mist.

Herobrine closed his eyes and looked away as it happened. He didn’t want to see it. When he was sure Player was gone, he opened his eyes. He looked up at the nether portal. It was calling to him, quietly, saying, “this way, this way. Here are the answers, here are the riches, all you seek lies beyond me.”

The wolf sauntered out of the forest and came up to him, tail wagging. It stopped when it saw the portal and snarled.

“I know,” Herobrine told it, “but he’ll be fine. He’s strong.”

Sam looked at him and cocked his head sideways.

“I’ve done all I can,” Herobrine defended himself, “I can’t hold his hand all the way through this.” He needed to distract himself.

“Why don’t you and I go find something special?” He said to the wolf, walking away from the portal. He would be back before Player if Player came back at all.

Player found himself sprawling on rough red stone. The obsidian had tipped him down a meter onto the ground. The texture of the stone was not like anything he had felt before. It was pocked and rough and radiated heat. As he pushed himself up it bit into his hands and left red dents in his skin. Player sat up and put his back against the obsidian of the portal. It was hotter than a desert at noon. When he took a breath the air scorched his lungs and made him cough. Now he knew why Herobrine had insisted he take so much water with him. He was thirsty already, and the sweat was evaporating off his skin even before it had time to dampen his hair or clothes. He was going to need all that water.

Player got to his feet, wincing and cursing himself for not being more careful. He squinted into the cloud around him. There was a red haze in the air that was the same color as the stone beneath his feet. He was underground, he thought. There was more of the red stone above him, but there was still light. He could see at least.

Player walked a few steps away from the portal, and the wall he had thought was very close spiraled away from him as the perspective changed. The wall was far away, and before him was a cliff that fell what must have been at least a hundred blocks before it levelled off in a short beach. Beyond that there was only molten rock. It went on and on into the distance until the opposite wall jutted out of the haze, a lip that hung over lava far enough that he couldn’t see the face of the wall it was attached to.

Player stared. Distant bells were ringing in his mind. “It’s a lake of fire,” he said faintly. He understood now why Herobrine was so afraid, and Herobrine had been afraid. There was a good chance that he was not going to survive this.

Player muttered to himself, like he was trying to keep someone from hearing even though no one was there, “‘But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.’” He shuddered.

A different smell than the stink of sulphur came to him. It was like frying bacon and rotting flesh. Player turned around and was greeted by a sagging porcine face, green around the ears and nose, pale and clammy. He stumbled away from it, thankfully not toward the cliff, to get a better look.

The thing looked like someone had sewn a hog’s head onto the body of a man complete with golden armor and sword. It grunted at him, the sound somewhere between a hog snort and a zombie moan, but didn’t so much as raise the golden sword by its side.

“Pigman,” Player said, remembering the description in the book. They were harmless unless he tried to hurt one of them. It was easier said than done. The thing was downright unnerving.

He looked at the portal and considered going back through it, but what would he do then? Herobrine was on the other side of that portal, and no matter how scared he was on Player’s behalf he would be disappointed, disgusted even, if he returned without making an effort. He could not imagine Herobrine’s expression if he returned like he was now, how far he would fall in the man’s eyes. He turned resolutely away from the portal, and the pig was there again. It seemed to be examining him.

“What?” Player asked it, allowing some of the fear to convert itself into anger.

The pig snorted at him, and Player laughed. It sounded like Herobrine. The mob scuttled away from him at the sound. That little relief of tension bolstered him, and he walked around the portal to look at the back side. He went slowly, not trusting the land around him not to fall away into lava all around.

It turned out that he was not on a cliff with land behind him, but a column that emerged out of the fire and disappeared high above him he was surrounded on three sides by lava. On the fourth side there was a gap of two or three blocks and then there was a jagged edge bricks. They didn’t look stable.

Player eyed them. They looked like part of a nether fortress, which meant he was beyond lucky. The book had contained a lengthy section about how to go about finding one of these places and he had been under the impression he would be walking for at least a couple hours looking for one. He could probably jump the gap to the bricks, but he didn’t like the look of the crumbling stone, and if they gave way beneath his weight he would drop a hundred blocks before plopping into molten rock.

Someone tugged at the pickaxe on his back. He yelped and jumped. It was the pig, its strange two-fingered hand still outstretched. Player glared at it. He removed his pick from his back, something he had never done, and put into his inventory. He replaced it when the iron sword. It felt strange and light across his shoulders, but it would serve him better in this situation. The pigman lost interest once the diamond was out of sight and wandered off back towards the portal.

Player watched it go. They liked shiny things, he guessed, or maybe the blue of the diamond awakened deep ancestral memories of water. Player was already feeling a little scorched. He could not imagine what it was like for the mobs who were stuck here. He took out a bottle of water and drank it all in one go without intending to. Looking at the empty bottle, he thought of cooking fish or chicken over a fire, how the skin turned opaque first, crisped and blackened, how it fell right off the meat. Something similar might be in his future. He should get a move on.

Player built a path of cobblestone out over the void, inching across it to the nether brick splinters. He crouched and put a hand on one of the blocks. It felt like he had pressed it against a heated furnace. He yanked it back on reflex and looked at his palm. It was a bright angry red. That wasn’t going to work.

He stood and put one foot on the nether brick. It held, but as he began to put more weight on that foot it groaned ominously. He pulled back, took a couple steps back on the cobblestone, ran, and leapt over the weak bricks. He landed solidly and held still, waiting for a hint that the stone beneath him was giving way. There was nothing. Not even a tremor. He straightened up, brushed himself off, and walked into the fortress.

If the outside was like being roasted over a campfire, being inside the nether fortress was like being baked in an oven. The corridors, though they were equipped with windows, radiated the heat back at him from all sides. Worse, the corridors were all identical and they turned at right angles, intersecting with other corridors at regular intervals. It was a maze.

Player drank another bottle of water while he walked. Even though he tried to take small sips, he soon found himself with an empty bottle. He put it away and resolved not to drink any more for a while. He didn’t have an unlimited supply of water.

As he wandered, sound began to permeate through the bricks. There were skeletons in here somewhere, he thought, and whatever was making the unearthly whirring sound. He wasn’t sure he wanted to come across that mob.

Finally, he came to a corner where a chest nestled. He opened it and dug around inside. There were a few ingots of gold and iron, but he could get as much of that as he wanted in the overworld. There was also a set of horse armor, which he took on impulse. It might be worth something in a trade.

It was impossible to judge the passage of time in the Nether, but Player was hungry. He tested the chest and found it to be hot but not dangerously so. He sat on it. The heat made all of his fruit soft and brought out strange perfume, but the juices inside were a passable substitute for more water so he ate what he could.

As he was finishing up the meal, there was a rattle from nearby. Player stood and reached for his sword.

What rounded the corner was not regular skeleton. It was carrying a stone sword, and its bones were covered by a thin layer of blackened flesh.

Player shuddered and gripped the sword tighter. Unlike the thing from the valley, this was a mob shaped like a regular skeleton but a little larger.

The mob turned toward him, it made a rattling noise and charged forward.

Player yelped in surprise and raised his sword, bracing the flat of the blade with his forearm. The stone sword rattled off his. There was a wisp of cold. The skeleton bounced back and struck forward again in one swift move. This time Player didn’t block. He ducked under the swing and cracked his sword across the mob’s midsection. The iron went right through the bones. Half the skeleton went one way, the other half the other, and it fell apart. The bones dissolved into black snow, but the skull remained. It stared up at him. Player kicked it and when he got no response he picked it up. He thought the thing had been a wither skeleton, and if it was there might be something he could use it for.

Player blew a puff of air into the skull, and ash puffed back out at him. He breathed some of it in and started coughing. It felt like he had inhaled particles of ice. When it was all out of his lungs, he sacrificed a mouthful of water to clear the stuff out of his mouth. He spat it out, but the water never hit the ground. It just evaporated back at him.

“Gross,” he said to himself, waving away the steam. He put the skull in his inventory and continued wandering.

Eventually he came to a staircase leading up to the next level of the fortress. He looked up at it with trepidation, but it was better than being stuck in this oven of a place. He started climbing, then skirted off to the side to investigate what hid in the shadow of the stairs. There was a bed of sand there, and little purple-red polyps were growing out of it. He crouched on the edge of the bed, then lit a torch in order to get a better look. At soon as the light touched them, the polyps burst into spores and became little more than stems poking from the earth. Player clapped a hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t make the mistake of breathing these in, even though the resulting tissues looked too heavy to float in the air.

The sand beneath the plants was gray and white and seemed to be moving slightly. Player laid a hand on it. It blissfully cold, and it was indeed moving. It engulfed his hand in only a few seconds. He pulled back and shook his hand to remove the sand from it. He stuck his torch into the sand to put it out, and the wood was swallowed up by the stuff in seconds. He shuddered and backed away. If he were to fall into that he would be swallowed up and frozen in seconds. It did not help that there appeared to be little faces just below the surface of the sand.

He stood and went up the staircase, not looking back down at the plants.

The top of the fortress was dotted with staircases to standing platforms and little builds to shelter under. Player saw two more of the skeletons close together and decided not to approach them. He had been able to deal with one, but two would be a stretch at best.

This part of the fortress was open to the roof of the Nether, and now it was clear to Player that the whole place was one giant cave. They were solidly encased in the crumbly red stone. He gazed up at the ceiling for a long time, tracing it down to where it vanished into the distance from all angles. There was a large white thing that might have been a mob and might have been cloud of steam. It was too far away to tell.

Player took shelter inside the closest structure, just to be safe.

“Use the book,” He said to himself sarcastically, “everything you need is in the book.” There had been nothing about this in the book, only how to find the Nether fortress in the first place. Where was he supposed to look for blazes? Herobrine had been doing this too long. He thought it was simple. It was anything but. He pulled out the book and opened to the section about the nether fortress, glanced through it again. No help whatsoever.

The fear and uncertainty were turning to anger. This was insane. He wasn’t going to go toe-to-toe with any more of these mobs. He had been collapsed on by large hordes before. It wasn’t enjoyable.

“I’m going to punch him for this,” he grumbled. Not hard, but he would. Herobrine deserved it.

He stood up and walked out of the shelter, still fuming. There was a whirring sound, like an old propeller engine powering up, and Player turned to look at the source of the noise. There was a staircase beside him that lead up to a platform, and on the platform there was a square cage of iron around what he recognized as a mob spawner. He hadn’t seen one since the reset. This spawner wasn’t pumping out zombies or spiders either. There were three columns of fire with faces around it, the bars around their outsides rotating so fast they were blurring. He had found the blazes.

Player flung himself back into the shelter of the building just as nine fireballs were launched his way. He scrambled away from the resulting blaze on his hands and feet, the skin on his palms reddening from contact with the superheated stone. Even compared with the heat already in the air, the fire was intense. If he fell into it his clothes would catch and then his hair and skin, and he would be gone in a few minutes of searing agony.

He remembered the potion. It was tucked away where he could get to it in a hurry, and he pulled it out. The blazes were approaching the corner. They were what had been wheezing and whining before, and now the sounds were as deafening as the blood pounding in his ears. His hands shook as he pulled out the potion and popped the cap on it.

The smell of the stuff was disgusting. Player gagged, holding the bottle away from him. He did not want to drink that.

One of the blazes rounded the corner of the shelter. It whirred and rose off the ground.

Player ducked back out of the shelter, putting another wall between himself and the mob. Three more charges flew past him and flame licked at the edges of the nether brick pathway. He didn’t have a choice. He could not withstand the heat of those mobs without the potion.

Player took a deep breath, held his nose with one hand, and drank down the potion. It was like drinking pond water laced with sulfur. It was like chugging rotten egg and wheatgrass smoothie. He clamped his mouth shut and grabbed a bottle of water. That left him with only three bottles left, but if he didn’t drink it he was going to throw up the potion and end up roasted. When that didn’t remove the taste from his mouth, he seized one of the peaches from his inventory and bit into it, skin and all. The perfume of the fruit was strong enough to knock down the taste of the potion. Player sighed with relief.

The blaze again turned the corner and came face to face with him. Its whine started to increase in intensity.

Player dropped the peach and grabbed his sword. The fruit sizzled on the stone, and the pleasant aroma of peach pie was suddenly in the air. He didn’t think, just raised the sword and thrust it into the fire. There was the sound of metal on metal as several of the spinning rods collided with the blade on after the other, but the metal held firm. Two of the rods spun out of orbit and landed on the nether brick at Player’s feet. Unfortunately, he had thrust into the fire itself, not the body of the mob within, and the force behind his thrust carried him off his feet and into the blaze. There were several stinging blows to his sides and back as the remaining blaze rods smacked into him and heat so intense he thought he was surely going to burst into flames, but instead Player found himself sprawling on the bricks on the other side of the blaze, feeling nothing but the texture of the stone and the heat radiating from it.

He pushed himself off of the ground, neither his hands or arms burning from the contact, and turned to face the blaze. They stared at each other for a long moment, both trying to understand what had just happened.

The blaze whirred and shot a fireball into Player’s chest. It dispersed into harmless curls of flame, not so much as scorching his clothing.

Player laughed. It almost tickled. New stamina was flowing into him, invigorating his taxed muscles and mind. He straightened up and readied his sword.

“Not so tough when your opponent is fire poof, are you?” he taunted.

The blaze whirred toward him, clearly intending to engulf him in the spinning rods and bludgeon him to death.

Player danced back. The sword flashed out and caught one of the rods. It broke in half and part of it spun away over the railing and into the lava far below. He laughed again, lunging forward with the sword. This time instead of jamming it into the column of fire, he aimed upwards towards the head of the mob. The iron bit into something there, something fleshy.

The blaze rods stopped spinning and the fire flickered out. The thing Player had on the end of his sword resembled nothing so much as a grub. Its head was oversized, its eyes swollen and bulging. Its body was curled into the fetal position, but if there had once been legs and arms they had been absorbed back into the torso. It squirmed on the end of his sword, screeching in pain, for several long seconds before it fell still and began to dissolve.

Player came away from it shaking, bile rising in his throat again. His foot slipped on something and he went flat on his back. It was one of the blaze rods That he had knocked from the mob. He picked it up. It wasn’t hot like he had expected, merely warm. He picked up the other rod and put both in his inventory. He needed 8 or 9 of them, according to the book and Herobrine. There were two other blazes and a spawner just around the corner.

Player picked up his sword, raised it, and charged forward.

The first blaze went down in pretty much the same way as the first had. Player managed to separate it from three of its rods before it died. The second attempt went much better. He perfected the trick of pulling the rods away from the body of the mob with the sword and did it again and again while it tried to hit him first with balls of fire and then with the spinning rods themselves.

When he pulled away the last rod, the flames flickered out and the grub inside them fell to the ground. It was gasping and squirming, like it was suffocating. Player put it out of its misery with a jab to the head. As it dissolved, he gathered up the rods scattered over the ground. He had more than enough.

Player straightened up. Another blaze had emerged from the spawner. He almost turned and fought it, but that was just wasting time. It had taken quite a while to handle the second blaze and he was getting hungry again.

Player went back around the corner where it couldn’t see him and sat down on the edge of the pathway. He drank another bottle of water and ate a loaf of bread. When his stomach was full and he wasn’t overheating anymore, he got up and went back to the staircase he had emerged from, but didn’t go down it. He had absolutely no idea how to navigate back through the maze down there. He should have left himself a path, he supposed.

He went back to the shelter he had used and climbed up onto the roof of it to look around. He was still in an ocean of lava with nothing on three sides. On the fourth side, far to his left, was a jut of netherrack that shot up above the fortress and ended in a plateau. He must have come from there.

Player fixed the thing in his mind and leapt back to the path. He started in that direction, skirting around the blazes and skeletons as he went, not wanting another fight that could end with him dead. Even with the potion in his system he wasn’t a match for a group of the mobs. That potion was going to wear off pretty soon anyway. Then he would be in real trouble.

He was almost to the pillar when there was a shriek from overhead and something impacted the bricks to his right with enough force to throw Player to the side. He hit the guardrail of the walkway and then the ground, scrambled to his feet again and turned to face this new threat. It was the large white mob he had seen overhead before. It was gazing at him through squinting eyes, judging the distance.

Player would have stood his ground, but he didn’t have a bow and there was no way to reach the mob with his sword. He turned and dashed for cover, found it in another small building on the top of the fortress. Another blast shook the roof over his head, and he looked for somewhere more permanent to hide. There was another staircase that lead down a floor a few blocks away.

He tried to fix the netherrack cliff in his mind as he sprang down the steps. When he hit the end of them he kept going, but more slowly, not wanting to lose his sense of direction.

There were a few pigmen in this area of the fortress, but nothing more dangerous, and they seemed happy to get out of his way. He chose a passageway that went in the right direction and stuck to it. It went on for miles it seemed before ending in a jagged cliff similar to the one he had entered through but over a long drop into lava. He leaned over the edge to orient himself and found the netherrack no closer than before, but to his right now. Somehow, he had overshot.

Player heard the whine of the white mob overhead and jerked back into the safety of the corridor. He turned right and went that way, only to be greeted by another dead end and a tantalizing view of his goal only a few hundred blocks away. He growled in annoyance and set about finding a way through the maze, always trying to go towards the pillar of netherrack.

Twice he hid from wither skeletons, and he paused again to eat more fruit and drink water. If his body’s internal clock was still functioning, that meant he had been in the nether for nearly an entire day. He didn’t know how long Herobrine would wait before writing him off as dead. He thought the man was liable to come after him first and try to follow his trail, but there was no way even Herobrine could track him in this place, so the sentiment would be largely wasted.

The buzz from the potion was fading now. His muscles were tiring. It was only a matter of time before he collapsed. The situation was becoming dire.

Finally he came around the turn and saw the distant glow of the portal. The pigman was still there. It had been joined by three more pigmen and, to his horror, two of the black skeletons and one regular one.

Player pulled up short and stared at them. This could not be happening. He was so close. He could feel the fire resistance leaving his body.

He slid back around the corner he had just come around as one of the mobs turned his way and leaned against the wall. His breathing was coming in sharp gasps, the air rough against his throat from running all day. He drank the last bottle of water and steeled himself. He could not stay here, and he could not fight them.

Player put the sword back on his back. He stepped around the corner and sprinted for the nether portal.

Herobrine had been pacing in front of the nether portal for what must have been two hours. The sun was setting the mountains on fire as it set, but the flames were burning low now and it would not be long before the moon showed itself. Player had been in the Nether all day.

He was clenching and unclenching his fists. He had done everything he could to keep himself busy, and now all he could do was worry and wonder how long he should wait before going in after him. If nothing else Player would need more water after a whole day in the Nether. He would need company too, mental support. Why had he sent the human in there like this? It was going to get him killed.

Herobrine made up his mind. He stepped to the portal, put a hand on the obsidian, and prepared to step upward into the purple substance.

The material in front of him flexed, turned pale, and Player shot out of it and collided with him. They both want sprawling, sliding over the grass.

Player took his first breath of overworld air and sighed. The grass underneath his hands felt incredibly good, but something was in between it and the rest of his body. Player opened his eyes and looked into Herobrine’s face. His eyes were large and luminous, his lips parted slightly in surprise. The man looked just as shocked as Player felt, but it was good to see him. He had missed him.

“Brine,” he said, still breathless from his sprint. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the potion that made him do it, maybe it was the adrenaline from the near-miss he had just had, maybe he was simply too tired to think straight. Whatever it was, Player leaned down and kissed Herobrine. There was a protest from a voice in the back of his head, but as soon at his mouth touched the man’s warm skin it was silenced.

Herobrine tensed with surprise, but there were fireworks going off inside his head. He put an arm around Player’s back and drew him down closer while his other hand slid into the human’s hair.

Player broke off the kiss. “I got the blaze rods,” he said, “why didn’t you warn me the fortress would be a maze?” Before the man could respond, he kissed him again, harder this time. His whole body was pressed against Herobrine now, and the arm around his waist was keeping it that way. Herobrine’s mouth was soft and warm, and he was kissing back with just as much force.

When that kiss broke, their foreheads were pressed together, both pairs of eyes closed. They were breathing hard.

Finally Player said, “That potion tasted disgusting.”

Herobrine chuckled. He ran his hand through Player’s hair, causing a cascade of red dust to fall from it. The caress was so intimate it broke something inside of Player’s chest. He kissed Herobrine again, much longer this time, hungrily. He let his body move against the man’s, the friction spreading warmth through his limbs. The suggestion was unmistakable.

Herobrine used the hand still in his hair to push Player back a little. He opened his eyes to see the man staring back at him.

“Player,” Herobrine said, “are you hurt?”

He thought of the bruises forming on his ribs and the slight burns on his palms, but Herobrine could see neither of those things right now and he wasn’t in any pain. “No,” he said, “I’m okay. I got the potion down before fireballs started flying.”

Herobrine relaxed. He ran his hand through Player’s hair again, letting his fingertips trail over the fuzz on the back of his neck. This time, he was the one who initiated the kiss, pulling the human to him. Player tasted like peaches, and his lips were softer than he had imagined them. It was all the confirmation that was needed.

Something cold and wet poked Player in the small of his back, where Herobrine’s arm had hiked his shirt up. He pulled back with a gasp and twisted to see what had caused it. Sam stood there, wagging his tail quizzically.

“Hey, boy,” Player said, not moving away from Herobrine.

The wolf looked satisfied he was okay and moved off into the gloom of the evening.

That broke the spell. Player looked around and realized how dark it was getting. He turned back to Herobrine, “Maybe we should move this inside.”

The man nodded wordlessly.

Player got to his feet and helped Herobrine up. He kept a firm grip on his hand as he lead him to the bunker.

Herobrine spoke up again, “Maybe we should wait until you’ve rested.”

Player shook his head, “I’ll never get up the courage again if we wait.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” He put as much certainty into the words as he could.

Herobrine shut the door behind them, bending the metal clasps a little out of shape with unintentional force, and wrapped his arms around Player’s waist from behind. He pressed a kiss into the back of his neck. He felt Player go weak at the knees from it, or maybe the man was just that exhausted.

They both looked at the bed. It looked very flimsy and small.

Player cleared his throat, “If we spread a blanket on the floor-” he started.

Herobrine whipped him around and pressed him against the wall. Player let out a little squeak of surprise that turned into a very different noise as lips found his for the fifth time. He felt hands fumbling at his belt, eager clumsy hands that had no more experience than his did. He smiled into the kiss as he guided Herobrine’s fingers to the buckle.


	57. Pillow Talk

“Are we going to sit here all day looking at this?”

“The cleaning cycle starts in five minutes.”

“Let’s put the sheet over him until then, okay?”

“Fine by me.”

“Thank goodness it’s not visiting day. We don’t have to explain this to his mother.”

* * *

They fell into the bed when they were as clean as they were going to get. The frame groaned under the weight but held up.

Herobrine nuzzled into Player’s neck even before the covers had been drawn up. He blew air out against the soft skin, and the man laughed.

“I guess I don’t need to tell you I like you,” Herobrine said.

“It would be a bit unnecessary,” Player agreed. He ran his own fingers through the man’s hair. It was sweaty and sticking to Herobrine’s forehead. The salt stung the abrasions on his palms.

“I really like you,” Herobrine pushed himself up to kiss Player. The human made a little noise as he relaxed into the contact. He wrapped his arms around Herobrine’s neck. Finally Herobrine pulled back, gasping for breath.

“I like you too,” Player said, “but I don’t think I need to tell you that.”

“Nope.” Herobrine moved down and kissed his neck.

“Don’t leave a bruise,” Player warned him.

“You don’t want something to match this?” He touched the bite mark low on the other side of Player’s neck. His shirt would hide it if he was wearing one. It had turned what was supposed to be a shout into a groan. Herobrine was pretty sure Player had heard him anyway.

“One makes it much sweeter,” Player replied, and then added, “and much less noticeable.” Herobrine didn’t reply, just squirmed further into the bed and prepared to sleep.

The bed wasn’t big enough to lay shoulder to shoulder, but if they were both on their sides and pressed close, they could just fit.

Player was looking at Herobrine’s face. The man’s eyes were already closed, and his breathing was slowing. It occurred to Player that he had never seen Herobrine completely relaxed before, never so much as seen him close his eyes. For the first time since he had known him, Herobrine had let all his guards down.

He couldn’t help it. It was bothering him. It was the only stain on the otherwise perfect night.

“Herobrine,” he said.

The man’s eyes opened and he looked at Player with trepidation. He knew what was coming.

“Who’s Steve?”

Herobrine sighed. His arms were already around Player to keep him close in the small bed. He drew him closer. Player let him.

“This is a weird explanation,” Herobrine warned him.

“As long as it doesn’t involve someone else, I don’t care.”

Herobrine smiled, “It doesn’t.”

“Tell me then.”

He raised a hand and cradled Player’s cheek, “That face you’re wearing. That’s Steve.”

Player raised his eyebrows, “Really?”

“Do you remember when I told you how there were lots of players that looked like you?”

“Yes,” he placed a hand over Herobrine’s without thinking about it, then he blinked, “so when you said you had another name for me, you meant this?”

Herobrine nodded, “When the game was still just a game, that face was the most common, and it had a name.”

“Steve,” Player said.

“Right. The face was named Steve, the person behind it wasn’t. They were just borrowing the face.” Herobrine’s voice was almost a whisper now, “someone told me a long time ago that one day the real Steve would come. Probably we would be enemies but there was always the chance that…”

“Oh, Brine,” Player said, guessing where this was going.

“It can be lonely here,” Herobrine had his eyes closed, “sometimes, a lot, it’s just me and no one else for millions of miles. Sometimes if I thought about it really hard and didn’t look at where he was standing, I could almost hear his voice.”

Player couldn’t stand it anymore. He kissed Herobrine. He felt the man respond, lean into the contact.

“So when… it just popped out,” Herobrine said, his mouth still close to Player’s, “I’m sorry.”

Player believed him, every word. It didn’t sound made up, and Herobrine was too tired to make up such a lie anyway. He wasn’t sure he cared whether it was made up as long as he was the one Herobrine wanted to lay down with at the end of the day.

“Steve,” he said to himself, trying it out. It sounded good in Herobrine’s voice, much better than “Player” did. “Would it make you feel better to call me that?”

Herobrine looked at him, “I think I already did.”

“You know what I mean. You said you had a better name for me.”

“Player--”

“Stop calling me that,” he said, “please. It sounds so wrong.”

Herobrine gazed at him, taken aback. His face softened, “You can’t mean that.”

“I do,”

“Player, human, it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“It feels a lot truer than ‘Player,’ and it’s a lot better than ‘human,’”

Herobrine shook his head. He sat up, the blankets falling around his waist, and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Player sat up too. He wrapped his arms around the man’s back, put his head against Herobrine’s shoulder.

“Brine,” he said softly.

“Did I do that to your hands?” Herobrine asked.

Player raised one of his hands and looked at it. “No,” he said, “I burned them a little in the Nether.”

The man turned to him, “you are hurt.” His eyes widened, “your ribs!”

Player looked down at himself. There was a series of purple bruises along his sides. “Blaze rods,” he said.

“You lied to me,” Herobrine growled.

“If I’d told you, you would have refused to have sex,” the phrase alone made him color, and Player found himself flinching away. He pulled the sheet up to cover his body. “Like I said; I never would have got up the courage again.”

Herobrine let a bottle of pink liquid form in his hand. He held it out to Player.

“In the morning,” Player said.

“Steve,” Herobrine caught himself too late and put his head in his hand, “What am I doing?”

“I don’t know,” Player admitted. He put his head on his knees, staring at the far wall.

After a minute he heard Herobrine take a deep breath. There was the chink of glass being set down on wood and strong arms wrapped around him, forcing him to uncurl.

“I know what I’m doing. I’m spending the night with my lover. Herobrine said. “You win, Steve,” he paused a moment, “It does sound better, doesn’t it?”

Player nodded, he tilted his head and let Herobrine nuzzle into his neck again. The man’s hands were massaging his stomach and chest, sending tingling shocks down his nerve endings. He squirmed a little in his grip, trying to contain laughter at the tickling and failing.

“Don’t go back into your shell,” Herobrine said, “I like this much better.”

Player heard the tremor in his own voice, “I’m not sure…”

“Stevie,” Herobrine murmured, and it sent pleasure all the way up Player’s spine. That name, in that voice, was magical. “I’m right here. You’re safe.”

His body relaxed, and Player leaned back into him, turning his head to catch the kisses coming his way. He let Herobrine lower him to the bed again, until he was stretched out beneath the man.

“Again?” Player asked, and choked off as Herobrine smothered him with kisses.

“Only if you want to,” He managed to say between them.

Player felt for the fear and missed it. “Yes,” he said, “yes please.”

Herobrine hummed deep in his chest.

“Don’t break the bed,” Player said.

“I won’t.”

When he opened his eyes hours later, Player didn’t know what had woken him. He was looking at Herobrine’s sleeping face. All the lines had gone from it. He looked young and vulnerable, nothing like his usual self. Player was pinned down by half of Herobrine’s body weight, arms and legs wrapped around him. He had his arms around Herobrine in return. That was how they had gone to sleep, tangled up, with Herobrine saying that name over and over again into his ear until Player wanted to keep it forever.

He smiled at the memory, ran three fingers through the sleeping man’s hair, and was about to nod off again when he heard it.

Outside, a wolf was howling. It was very close to the bunker.

Player started. He felt Herobrine shift against him, and the man raised his head.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Sam is howling,”

“Wolves howl,” Herobrine pointed out.

“Sam doesn’t. He knows to shut up at night,” Player started to sit up but stopped with a wince, his hand going to his lower stomach. His muscles had tensed during the night and they had not appreciated the previous evening’s activities.

Herobrine sat up. “I’ve got it. You stay here.”

“Thanks,” Player laid back down, “ow.”

Herobrine was getting up. His movement let a sliver of cold night air into the bed, and Player shivered. Herobrine looked back at him, “Sore?”

Player nodded.

Herobrine tapped the bottle of potion still beside the bed and left it at that. He stood up and went to where their clothes were piled on the floor.

Player snuggled down into the warm place his body had left behind. He would drink the potion later. This pain was a good one, if there was such a thing. It had a good memory attached to it.

Herobrine made an irritated noise.

“What is it?” Player asked.

“Wrong pants.” He hopped back out of them, one foot and then the other.

“Aren’t we the same size?”

“My hips are bigger than yours.” He pulled his shirt on over his head and took a moment to fold Player’s clothes and put them on the chest by the wall.

Player was starting to drift off again when Herobrine came over, leaned down, and gave him a kiss, first on the mouth, then on the forehead. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

Player reached up a hand and caressed the man’s cheek, “I’ll be here.”

Herobrine left the bunker. The door, the hinges of which he had bent a little on the way in last night, was sticky, but he managed to force it open and then closed behind him.

Player heard him whistle, calling the wolf. 

He closed his eyes, tucked his nose under the blanket to breathe Herobrine’s scent better. “I love you,” he said to the air, knowing that no one could hear him and that made it okay. He didn’t know if he loved Herobrine, but it felt like he did.

There was was a crack from outside that seemed to shake the whole world. It was a boom, a huge noise, and then an echo that rang for several seconds.

Player’s eyes flew open and he sat up fast. He knew that noise. That had been a gunshot. His stomach screamed at him as he got out of bed and hurried to his clothes. Someone was shooting outside and it wasn’t Herobrine.

There was another gunshot.

Player’s brain said, “Rifle.” He jumped from foot to foot as he pulled on his pants then his shirt over his head. His shoes were all the way across the room. They had been the first thing to come off, and kicked to get them out of the way.

He was just slipping on his second shoe when it happened. There was another gunshot, a little farther away than the ones before, then another so fast they were almost the same noise, and following them was a sound Player had no word for. It sounded like the scream of the floating white mob in the Nether, but that thing wasn’t here. It was the worst sound he had ever heard.

Herobrine was in pain, terrible pain.

Player jammed his shoe on and pulled out his sword. He grabbed the potion before he ran for the door and threw his weight against it. The hinges ground and shrieked and opened with painful slowness. He jammed his shoulder into it just as a storm of snarling started from outside. Sam had come onto the scene. Player saw him streak across the yard towards the woods. He heard the gunshot, so loud now it was almost deafening, and saw the wolf stumble, red mist blooming from its chest. Something impacted the stone to the left of the door, sending stone chips flying.

Player felt tears sting his eyes. The door would not open wide enough for him to get out. He threw his whole body into it again and again, forcing it open against the bent metal. Finally he squirmed sideways through the gap and emerged into the open air.

The wolf was still on its feet, but it was stumbling now, starting to fall.

There were more gunshots, this time the rapid staccato of quick trigger pulls, and the furry body jerked sideways as the slugs impacted. There was another more distant shot and Herobrine screamed again, a sound that must have shredded his vocal cords as it came out.

Player looked for the muzzle flash in the woods, saw it. He turned and went sideways along the hill into the treeline where there was more cover.

“The target’s here!” a voice said. It came from his right.

Player veered in that direction, moving more slowly now that he was in the trees. He could hear the sound of Sam’s pained whimpers, an quieter shriek of pain from Herobrine.

He saw the silhouette of the man with the rifle through the trees, outlined in moonlight. He charged, knowing in his heart that this was the leader of the group, that if he could take down this person that everything would be okay, that he could undo everything that had been done in the last few minutes. If he could just kill this man, everything would be fine.

The muzzle of the gun swung towards him, but Player didn’t care by that point. He brought the iron sword down hard, but it never bit into flesh.

Someone hit him across the back of the head with the butt of a gun. The force of the blow sent him sprawling. His brain rocked in his skull and his vision blurred.

Someone yanked his hands behind his back and tied his wrists together so tightly his fingers lost feeling. Someone else sat on his legs and did the same to his ankles and then his knees, then tied his hands to his legs so his arms were trapped straight behind his back.

“Looks like he’s not a prisoner,” one of the men said.

“Or his cage was really bad,” someone else said in a kinder tone.

“Which is why he tried to kill me, of course,” the leader still had the barrel of his rifle trained on Player.

A knee on Player’s lower back was making him squirm. Pain was biting into his spine where he was sore and his ribs where the bruises were. He groaned in pain and tried to squirm away.

“Get him on the horse,” the leader spat.

There was a rustling in the trees and for a moment Player thought Herobrine was going to come bursting out of the bushes and rip these men apart, but it was two more men. That made five in total, he thought.

“Got him,” one of them said, “he’s down.”

“Down? I thought you were going to kill him.”

“We did, sir.”

Player felt a sob well up in his chest. He tried to scream, but the moment he opened his mouth one of the men stuffed a rag into it. It tasted like sweat.

“That’s enough of that,” the man said, “you’ll bring down all the mobs in the world on us if you scream. You don’t want that.”

Player tried to spit the gag out. He kicked with both feet and managed to hit someone.

“Jesus Christ,” they gasped.

Player twisted and kicked again, earned himself another whack on the head. His world went black and white and he stopped moving. Tears were running down his face.

They heaved him up and put him across the back of a horse. It stamped as its load was secured with more ropes.

Player’s whole body was cold. He was still crying and his tears were like rivers of fire over his face.

“Please,” he was saying over and over to himself, “please, please let them be okay, please let them be alive.”

A rider mounted the horse and kicked it. They went around the edge of his yard, around the bunker and the burned out house.

Player didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help himself.

The wolf’s body was not still. He was twitching, spasming. He was making little whimpering noises. The grass all around the body was stained red.

Player screamed through the gag in his mouth, he twisted and tried to move but the ropes were too tight.

There was no sign of Herobrine at all.

Player closed his eyes and cried, his whole body jerking with the sobs. It was all gone.


	58. The Prisoner

From the research notes of Ana Dane, 3 September 2017

“Non-humans have a way of bending the minds of those around them, particularly the humans they are close to. They wear down moral barriers, enable behaviors the individuals wouldn’t normally exhibit. The most prominent displays of such phenomenon are puppets, whose conscious mind is nearly nonexistent, allowing the subconscious, the Id to use an outdated and inaccurate Freudian metaphor, to rule. Puppets are in a class of their own. Most humans whose morals are worn down are simply willing to do whatever it takes to ensure the safety of themselves and those closest to them. Similar phenomena are observed constantly where the individual prioritizes survival over morality. Those in contact with non-humans react in this way more easily than others, and when they act on the behalf of the non-human their personalities sometimes warp to compensate for the dissonance caused. Even more common is the overreaction caused by the ignorance of that fact that non-humans cannot die.”

* * *

They didn’t let Player off the horse during the ride to the city. It took them the rest of the night to get back even with the fast transportation. They rode through the gate just after dawn.

The streets were lined with people, many more than there had been the last time he was here. Player looked at them through eyes that were red with crying. They stared back with hatred on their faces, hatred and fear.

A man burst through the crowd and threw something. It hit Player’s side. It was a rock; he noted as it bounced away. He made a tiny sound of pain into the gag in his throat.

“Fucking traitor!” The man yelled at him, “living with that monster!”

Player just looked at him. His blue-violet eyes had bags under them. His hair was still the tangled mop that sleeping with Herobrine had left it. He met the man’s eyes, looking for understanding, for a connection. He found nothing of that, only anger.

It was as if a dam had burst. Suddenly the whole crowd was screaming at him.

“Traitor!”

“Liar!”

“Murderer!”

A whole barrage of small projectiles came flying his way. Some were rocks like the first one, some sticks that left brown flakes of bark on impact. Still others were fruits or vegetables and spattered him with juices.

The horse Player was on was tied onto whinied and kicked, tossing him into the air a little as it did. Player let an involuntary yelp.

The guards, who up the point had been ignoring the disturbance, drew weapons and stepped toward the crowd. The projectiles ceased at once. The screaming did not.

The taunts started to get more creative.

“Monster lover!”

“Demon fucker!”

“Faggot!”

Then someone, a woman, a high shrieking voice, “I bet you fucked him!”

Player closed his eyes. The fear was flowing inside him again, clawing up his throat. The mental image of The Nether came to him, the lake of fire stretched forever before him. Eternal torment. He ripped himself away from it, tried to block out the sound of the crowd, as if he could possibly hold back that noise.

They were all chanting now, “Monster fucker, monster fucker, monster fucker.”

Player tried to put his hands over his ears, but they were still tied behind his back and all it did was send pins and needles through his numbed limbs.

He gave his mind a savage twist and pulled away from the fear. He forced himself down into somewhere unfeeling and cold where he was not really Player anymore, just a mind in a body. The sound of the crowd faded a few decibels, until the words were indistinct.

Someone dared to throw another rock. It hit Plauer squarely in the eye. He did not hear the guards respond, but it didn’t seem the matter anymore.

He was cold, so cold, and it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.

Herobrine was waiting for him in the cold, a warm oasis of light in the darkness. Player almost went to him there, but the chanting of the crowd was still too loud and he didn’t want to taint the memory of Herobrine with it. At the end of all this he wanted to be able to enjoy the memories.

The horse stopped walking and the shouts of the crowd drew closer.

“You’ll kill us all!” they were saying.

“You’ve betrayed us.”

“We’ll all burn in hell because of you!”

“I know,” Player thought, “I know that,”

“You goddamn freak!”

“Burn him like the faggot he is!”

Hands untied the ropes around him, lifted him down from the horse. He was slung over someone’s shoulder. He was treated to a view of three guards holding back a screaming crowd of people for several long seconds before a door closed mercifully between him and them.

“Monster fucker!” was the last thing he heard.

They went down two flights of stairs to a basement level without windows. Once there the guard set him down and pulled the rag from his mouth. Player closed his mouth properly and realized the corners of his lips were cracked and sore from having the gag stuffed into it.

“There we go,” he said, looking down at Player. “Don’t look so glum. You’re alive! If I’d had my way you wouldn’t be.” When he got no response the guard gave him a light slap on the cheek, “You in there?” he asked.

Player was in there, but it felt like he was staring out at the world from miles away.

“Ah, whatever. You’re just gonna get killed anyway.” The guard untied one of his hands and jammed it into the pocket of Player’s jeans. He leaned in from behind Player, so close that he could smell and sweat on his body and alcohol still lingering on his breath. He tried hard not to gag. 

The guard removed every item from his inventory as Player watched, helpless. He took the pickaxe first, hefting it appreciatively, “Real beauty,” he said, “don’t suppose you mind sharing?”

Player didn’t respond. He was biting on his cheek so hard he was tasting blood.

“Well the rules are the rules, so I’ll have to leave it here for now,” He placed the diamond pick into a nearby chest. All of the other items that remained in Player’s inventory followed quickly. He still had the gold nuggets there, as he had been convinced he would need them someday.

“That package,” he said to the guard as he neared it, speaking quietly.

“What about it?” the man asked.

“It’s filled with gold nuggets,” Player said, “if you let me go, I’ll let you keep it.”

The man seemed to consider it for a moment. “Yes,” he said, “I think that’s a good deal.” He took the parcel from Player’s inventory and hefted it, “of course kid, I can’t do that.” He threw it into the chest.

Player could practically hear Herobrine scolding him, “Wrong guard,” he was saying, “you had to pick the right one.” His jaw tightened. He almost lashed out, but didn’t. Instead he sank back down into the cold place. It was better down there than it was in the light.

“Interesting artifacts we have here,” the guard said, raising the blaze rods to inspect them, “nice and warm.”

Player could barely hear him.

“What the hell is this thing?” The man said again, holding the skull in one hand.

Tears stung at Player’s eyes again as he realized there was only one thing left in his inventory. The book. He had it almost memorized, but that wasn’t the point. It was from Herobrine. It was the only object he carried with him Herobrine had made. He did not respond outwardly when the guard took it, and the man didn’t so much as read its cover.

Player promised himself he was going to get the book back. Even if he had to fight his way out of here, he was going to get that book. It was no substitute for the real thing, but it was better than nothing.

“Okay,” the guard turned to the cell. Keeping a firm grasp on Player’s arm, he pushed him into the cage and closed the door behind him. The lock clicked into place.

The guard cut him loose. Player brought his hands forward and rubbed the welts on his wrists. He looked around the cell as feeling began to return to his limbs. There was a cot in one corner.

Player walked over to it and sat down. He rubbed his lower legs to get circulation back into his feet. The guard was watching him through the bars, sitting on a chair against the opposite wall. When there were pins and needles running down all of his extremities, Player laid down on the cot and rolled away from the room.

He closed both eyes, one of them was starting to swell and it didn’t take much to close it, and focussed on a mental image. He felt the phantom arms wrap around him, the mouth press against the back of his neck. His breathing eased a little. It was comforting to be held even if it was only a fantasy. 

“Are you gone?” he mouthed silently, “did they kill you?”

The phantom Herobrine gave no reply, only nuzzled into his neck and closed its eyes.

Player did not sleep. He could not sleep. He stared at the stone wall first with two eyes, then only one as his right one swelled shut. He kept seeing the broken body of the wolf on the grass, hearing the crowd screaming at him. The crack of the gunshot was the screaming, and the rocks that pelted him were also the bullets that ripped through the wolf’s body.

He could picture it too. Herobrine, still straightening his clothing, without his sword, unwary for the first time ever, hair mussed and lips bruised from kissing, walking out of the bunker. He saw the man whistling, calling the wolf. He saw him walking farther out.

The first gunshot. Not a hit, surely, but close enough to make Herobrine react. He saw him jumping forward, finding cover in the forest around the clearing. He had dodged between the trees, trying to locate his attackers. Then had come the staccato bangs of the second volley, not killing shots or the man wouldn’t have been able to scream, but hits this time. His leg? His stomach? Then the fourth bullet, Herobrine on the ground, looking up at his attacker. Where had the executing shot been made? Not his head, Player hoped. That mental image was too much, how the skull would rupture and spatter, but that couldn’t be because Herobrine had cried out again. It had been the back, he thought, or the chest. That was important because it opened up the possibility that Herobrine had survived the attack. Perhaps in that moment right before he had been shot, the guard holding the gun had seen the man hiding beneath the monster and had pulled the barrel to the side in shock. It was possible.

“Don’t you trust me?” said the imaginary voice in his ear. “Steve, trust me.”

Player shivered with remembered pleasure. “I trust you,” he mouthed back, not letting any sound pass his lips.

He was brought back to reality by the sound of the door to the floor opening and then closing. Three distinct sets of footsteps approached. One sped up as it approached until the person was running, and then hands hit the bars of the cell.

“Player!” Clarence cried.

Player sighed. He should have known. Apart from that he didn’t even change his breathing.

There was a heavy pause as the other people reached his cell.

“What’s wrong with him?” someone else said. This voice was harder to place, but Player had heard it before.

“Don’t know,” the guard said, “he was squirming around all the way here, even kicked the horse a couple times. We had to tie his legs down.”

“He’s covered in rotten fruit,” Clarence said, outrage rising in his voice. “Get us water!”

There was no movement from anyone.

“Is this how you treat your prisoners?” the man demanded, “making a spectacle, public humiliation? You’re worse than Herobrine!”

There was an uncomfortable shuffling.

“I said water! Get food too, and a blanket.”

“It’s uh…” the guard sounded hesitant, “it doesn’t look like he was a captive. He tried to stab the sergeant in the forest. It could be dangerous to--”

“We. Don’t. Know. That.” Clarence said each word as its own sentence. “If someone were shooting at me I’d attack them too. Are you sure no one mistook him for Herobrine and fired at him?”

Clarence, ever the optimist. Player closed his eyes. The imaginary Herobrine kissed the back of his neck again, barely a brush of lips across his skin, “I’ll be right back.”

“Well, no,” the man said, “it was dark out, and we had to shoot a wolf that came out of the forest.”

“Then don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Even so, if he was a captive he wasn’t locked in a cage.”

“There’s more than one way to keep someone captive,” said the unknown voice, “Thomas, go fetch us water.”

The third pair of footsteps receded back down the hallway.

“Player,” Clarence said again, “are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

The feeling of Herobrine pressed against his back faded. Player wrapped his arms around his knees and drew himself into a ball. “The world hates me,” the thought.

There was silence for a long time, and then Clarence said, “Both of you come with me for a minute.”

They left Player there in the cell and walked back down the hallway, closed the door between them and him.

“What the hell happened?!” Jericho demanded of the guard as soon as it closed. He seized the man by the collar, “I said bring him here in one piece, not beat him half to death and allow him to be stoned in the streets!”

“Boss, relax,” the guard said, “he’s alive, ain’t he?”

“He is useless to us catatonic!”

“He’s not catatonic. He tried to bribe me to let him go.”

Jericho paused. He looked closely at the man, “Bribe you?”

“Yup. He had a whole purse of gold nuggets. They’re still in there, in the chest with all his other stuff.”

“Of course he did. He’s a miner; they always have valuables on hand,” Clarence said.

“Why didn’t the guards control the crowd?” Jericho demanded.

“Sergeant told us not to,” the man shrugged, “we couldn’t have stopped them anyway.”

Clarence had his hands balled into fists by his sides, “What they were screaming… I’d be in shock too.”

The guard smiled, displaying a malice that had been hidden so far, “Looked to me that they hit him where it hurt.”

Clarence hit him across the face so hard his palm stung.

“Why you little shit!” The guard roared, raising his own hand.

Jericho grabbed him by the arm and twisted it behind the man to the breaking point. He was a builder, and builders were strong, stronger than second-rate guardsmen who were too fond of beer.

Clarence clapped his hands on either side of the guards face and pressed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. He applied pressure and the man cried out.

“Mercy! Mercy! I’m sorry!”

He stopped pressing down but didn’t move his hands, “We don’t know where he’s been or what’s been happening. For all we know he could have been abused by Herobrine. Raped.” Clarence’s voice was calm and soft and that made it all the more terrifying, “If that’s the case and he rode all the way through town hearing people call him ‘monster fucker,’ I will personally put you and every other guard within these walls in stockades and leave you outside the wall for the zombies. Do you understand?” He finished off the speech with a sweet smile, head tilted to the side.

The man shuddered, “I understand,” he said weakly.

“Good,” Clarence let him go and straightened up. “I’m going to go in there by myself,” he said to Jericho, “I’ll be able to get him to talk.”

Jericho gave him a long look, “Don’t give him any of his stuff back.”

“I won’t. Player’s harmless. He can’t fight other people at all.”

“Well, good luck to you. I’ll send Thomas in with the water when he gets back.”

“Thank you.”

Player heard the door open again. There was only one set of footsteps this time. 

“Player,” Clarence said from behind him. “It’s just me now.”

Player didn’t respond. He heaved himself out of the cold place where Herobrine waited and back into his mind, where the chants of the crowd still echoed.

“In a few minutes someone is going to bring a bucket of water so you can wash the fruit off yourself,” Clarence said, “if you’re hurt, I can get bandages for you. I’m not sure they’ll let me into the cell but--”

Player pulled the thin pillow from under his head and held it over his head to dampen the man’s voice.

Clarence stared at Player’s hand. It was red and the skin on his palm was peeling. There was a red indent around his wrist where a rope had cut into it. His fingers were still a bit blue from losing blood flow for so long. “You are hurt,” he said, “they tied you up too tightly.” He got to his feet and moved to the bars of the cell. “Come here and let me look at your hands.”

Player pressed the pillow down tighter, knowing it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

“I know you’re in pain right now, and I heard what they were yelling out there. I’m sorry about that, but I just want to help and shunning me isn’t going to make me go away.”

Finally Player responded to him. “They shot my dog,” he said.

“They what?”

“They shot my dog,” and he was suddenly furious, low boiling anger deep inside him, something he had never felt before. Player sat up, swung around to face Clarence, and he hated him with every fiber of his being, hated him more than he could ever express even by screaming at him.

Clarence looked at him. “Oh God,” he said, “what happened to you?”

The anger faded. He couldn’t be mad at Clarence. Clarence was wrong, but he was wrong for the right reasons.

Player wiped red juice off his forehead with the palm of one burned hand, leaving a streak over his face. “That water would be nice,” he said.

“You need a compress for your eye more than water,” Clarence put his hand in his pocket and opened his inventory. He took out a bloody steak and wrapped it in a piece of cloth, “Here.”

Player stook up on shaky legs and took it from him. He pressed the meat over his black eye. “Thanks.”

“How did that happen?”

“Someone threw a rock at me on my way here,” he pulled up the hem of his shirt to show off the host of bruises colonizing his torso. His whole chest was sore from being thrown around by the horse.

“They’re scared,” Clarence said, “they think Herobrine is going to kill them all.”

Player laughed so hard he had to sit back down. “Ow,” he said.

“What’s funny about that?” Clarence asked, sounding genuinely offended.

“Nothing,” Player said, “nothing at all.” He pictured Herobrine laying on the grass, unable to rise, unable to breathe. He wasn’t sure the man could die, but he could experience pain.

“Player, did he hurt you?” Clarence said.

He didn’t need to ask who he meant. Instead of replying he said, “Why are you defending them?”

“Defending who?”

“All of them. They killed my dog, beat me and tied me up, kidnapped me, screamed insults and threw stones at me. Compared to them Herobrine is a saint.”

“Herobrine is destroying us,” Clarence said, “he’s no saint.”

Player didn’t respond. He lowered the steak from his eye so that Clarence could see the bruise.

“Everyone is terrified of him,” Clarence went on, “this is the last sanctuary there is. Everywhere else has either been abandoned or destroyed. This world is in ruins.”

Player stared at him, now completely lost, “and you decided that the best thing to do was shoot him and kidnap me?” he asked.

“He kidnapped you,” Clarence said.

Player thought about it, rewound mentally to when he was still “yelling Bible verses” at Herobrine about not killing people. He pictured how it must have looked to Clarence. “This is a mess.”

Clarence started, “What?”

“You think Herobrine kidnapped me and so you rescued me from him. I know he took me somewhere safe and healed me. You’ve made a mistake by taking me back.”

“He healed you?” Clarence said faintly.

Player pressed the steak back to his eye before it swelled back up completely. He nodded.

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” He lied, “he just did.”

“But he’s the one that wounded you!”

“I hurt him first. I shot him in the back.”

“That doesn’t excuse the fact that he hurt you!”

“I know,” Player said, “I was mad at him for a long time.” He shivered at the memory. He half expected all his new warm feelings towards Herobrine to flee on the spot, that his mind would snap into Clarence’s reality, but it didn’t happen. The Herobrine that teased him and held his hand was the real thing, not whatever monster came out when he was attacked. “He changed my mind,” he said finally, “he’s persistent.”

Clarence stared at him for a full minute, and then horror filled his face. “You have Stockholm Syndrome!” he exclaimed, “You actually think he’s your friend!”

Player’s face creased into a frown, “Do I?”

Just then the door opened and a man came in holding a bucket of water. Player looked at him, saw the ragged scar on his arm, and thought, “A wolf could do that.” He no longer had to wonder who had burned his house down. It had been this man and probably an accomplice with him.

He memorized Thomas’s face as the man set the bucket of water down. They made eye contact, and Player saw just as much hatred as the people outside had displayed. The man left again as fast as he could.

Player stood up again and walked over to the bars. He pulled the bucket of water through the bars and lifted it onto the cot. There was a cloth hanging on the edge. He soaked it and used it to wipe the juice and pulp off his face and then his arms. He thought about the suggestion some more as he did this. When he was done scrubbing what looked like a banana off his neck, he said, “No, I don’t.”

“You can’t assert that,” Clarence protested, “he hurt you and isolated you, no one else has seen you for a month! We don’t know what he’s been doing to you during that time.”

Player started to dunk the cloth back into the bucket but decided against it. Instead he took a breath and stuck his head into the water and scrubbed his hair to remove the rotting fruit. He came back up a moment later with a gasp. His hair sprayed water droplets across the whole cell and left spots on Clarence’s shirt as he shook it. He pushed it back out of his face with a sigh. Clarence was staring at him, blushing all the way up to his ears.

“He hasn’t seen me for a while and he’s just now remembering what I look like,” Player thought. Aloud he told the lie he had concocted with his head underwater, “I hate him so much Clarence, you have no idea.”

The man blinked. His mouth dropped open a little.

“He won’t stop following me,” Player continued, desperation that was not fake in his words, “I wanted to get back to you, but when I figured out he was going to follow me, I went the other way.”

“Why?” Clarence asked.

“It was better to let him bully me then to have him rip you apart.”

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Clarence protested.

“It wasn’t just for you. Other players would have died too…” He took a breath like it was hard to say, “I guess I just didn’t want to see anyone else killed.” He pulled his shirt off and put it into the bucket. 

“Did he hurt you?” Clarence asked, and then “did he do that do your chest?”

Player looked down at himself. He shook his head, “That’s all from the horse and the rocks people threw. That’s the thing; he doesn’t want to hurt me.” He pulled his shirt back out of the water. It was still stained but at least now there were no chunky bits stuck to it. He laid it over the cot.

“What did he do then?” Clarence asked.

“Talk mostly.” He felt guilt rush him. Herobrine was out there somewhere, shot and bleeding, and he was doing laundry, but he could not think of another way out of the cell besides through Clarence, and he needed to get out. He continued with the story, “He told me stories about the villages. Which buildings he burned, who screamed the loudest when they were about to die, who begged for mercy at his feet. It made me angry hearing about how he killed people, but I was so afraid, Clarence.”

Clarence was too busy staring at his chest to reply.

Player reached down and undid the belt of his jeans. He pulled it out of the loops and undid the button on them. In his head he heard, “Monster fucker!” “So what if I am?” He thought, “I’ll take the monster over you people, and to take the monster I need to get out of this cell.” He looked up Clarence through his eyelashes, just a quick peek to confirm what he knew. The big brown eyes were wide and he was shifting back and forth uncomfortably. He was swallowing often.

Player turned on all of his new found charm. He stepped out of his jeans, and instead of putting them into the bucket he just left them on the floor. His torso and arms were covered in purple and yellow bruises, and he knew his eye was sporting a ring and his mouth was bruised at the corners. He looked like the posterboy for an anti-abuse campaign, but he wasn’t concerned about that. For Clarence the impulse to help him would be just as strong as the physical attraction this display might illicite. Besides, he had been visibly bruised the second time he and Herobrine had had sex, and all that had done was earn him a few kisses on his ribs. He couldn’t think about that now though, not while he was just in his underwear.

“Clarence,” he said, “is anyone going to come in here without telling us?”

Clarence looked at the door, then back at Player. He got up and walked down the hallway out of sight. Player let the coquettish look drop for a moment while he was gone. He took a deep breath. He was going to scrub himself for a week to get this off his body. He stooped and picked something up off the floor. 

“I’m going to try to help the bruising,” he heard Clarence say to someone outside, “you can go do something else.” Then, mercifully, “give me the key to the cell. He can’t get it from me, he can barely stand up.” There was a jangle, then, “this is going to take a while. Go get some breakfast. I’ll be fine. Yes, really, go.”

The door closed and Clarence came back down the hall.

Player put the lie back on his face. He leaned his head out through the bars and gave Clarence a smile as he approached. “Thank you,” he said.

Clarence touched his cheek beneath his bruised eye, and Player winced. “Sorry,” he said, “it looks like the bruising is going down already.”

Player smiled, “Healing goes faster here. I’ll be okay in a couple hours.”

“I’ll take a look anyway,” Clarence said, “I have a couple things that might help.”

“This isn’t really about that,” Player said. He let his voice drop off and he backed away from the door of the cell. He turned around so Clarence couldn’t see his face. “Did you hear what they were saying as they brought me in?” he asked.

Clarence didn’t respond.

“The crowd,” Player said, “they were screaming at me, calling me a--”

“I heard it,” Clarence said.

“I didn’t,” Player said, “I would never.” He let his shoulders hunch up like he was about to cry, “I know I’m not normal, but I never wanted to… and I felt so dirty just hearing it.”

It wasn’t quite enough, Clarence was still standing on the other side of the bars.

“H-he tried once,” He forced out, “he didn’t force me, but he tried. He grabbed my--”

The lock on the door clicked open and it swung open. Clarence locked it again behind himself, and Player gratefully let the words trail off. He hunched his shoulders even more as Clarence drew close, soft sobs of breath doing the job now. A hand touched his arm.

“Player,” Clarence said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Ya,” Player said, “me too.” He twisted viciously from hips and shoulders. The rope that he had wrapped around his knuckles deadened the blow for him, preventing him from breaking his hand on Clarence’s skull. The smaller man wasn’t so lucky. His head jerked to the side and he went down with an expression of such shock on his face that Player’s conscience started acting up. He shoved it down and dropped with his knee on Clarence’s back. He unwrapped the rope around his fist and repurposed it as bindings for the man’s hands and feet.

Clarence was not unconscious. He could hear every word Player said.

“The guard left me this,” he said, “he probably thought I would hang myself with it. Don’t worry, I won’t tie your hands as tightly as they did mine.”

“Why?” Clarence asked weakly.

Player flipped him onto his back, to look into the big brown eyes, “Because they killed my dog and shot Brine and kidnapped me.”

“Brine?” Clarence said, confused.

Player hauled the man to his feet. He twisted his arms and put one of Clarence’s hands into the pocket of his pants just as the guard had done for him.

“I just fed you a huge pile of crap,” he told Clarence as he examined the contents of the man’s inventory, “and I want to settle the score.”

He plucked the cell key out first, then saw to his delight that Clarence was carrying a gun and several extra cartons of bullets. He took them too, then some string that the man had handy.

“That was all a lie?” Clarence asked.

Player pulled the man’s hands back out of his pocket. “Yes it was” he said.

He shoved Clarence down onto the cot, overturning the bucket of water as he did so. He made a rope of his own from the string he had obtained and used it to tie the man’s hands to the metal bar serving as a headboard. He left him there pulled his clothes on.

Player leaned over him so Clarence could see his face, “I’m really sorry,” he said again, “I had to. You never would have let me out, and they shot Brine in the woods. He could still be out there bleeding to death.”

“They shot him?” Clarence said. Hope started sparkling in his eyes.

Player gave him a brisk smack on the cheek. “Of course they did,” he snarled, “someone sent them after him.”

Clarence flinched.

He walked to the cell door and unlocked it. He went to the chest. Everything went back into his inventory except the pickaxe. He put that across his shoulders, relieved to have its familiar weight. The last thing he took was the healing potion. He almost drank it, but Herobrine would need it more than he would. He put it back into his inventory. “Sorry about this again,” he said.

“Player,” Clarence said, “don’t do this! He’s a monster.”

Player was already out of the cell door. He locked it behind him. “He’s not a monster. He’s trying to help us.”

“I’ll scream until someone comes down to get me,” Clarence warned.

Player shrugged, “Go Ahead. I have four extra pieces of obsidian, we’re two floors underground, and you just told the guards you’d be fucking me on the cot for at least three hours. By the time they come to make sure we’re still here, I’ll be long gone.”

“I didn’t mean--” Clarence protested.

“Yes, you did. Don’t worry about it, just do me a favor and never tell Herobrine I stripped to get out of the cell. He’ll tease me about it forever.”

“Player?” Clarence said, “please don’t do this! Player!”

Player went to barricade the door with obsidian blocks. He never looked back.


	59. Surgery

“And we’re back down.”

“Down?”

“Down to the pre-reset norms. Back down the hole, I guess.”

“He’s recovering.”

“Slowly. Sometimes I think it would be better for him to stay in the game, with someone he trusts.”

“Me too, but he can’t. He needs to wake up.”

* * *

Player dug his way back up to street level. He came up in a space between buildings that obviously wasn’t meant for use. For a moment he closed his eyes, letting the sun warm his skin, and then he laid out his plan in his head. 

He could see the wall over the tops of the buildings; the guard towers on top of the gate stood out prominently. He needed to get up higher. If he could find the mountains and orient himself in that direction he could find his way out of the city and back to the bunker. Judging by the sound of the screaming mob from behind him, if he could get a few streets away he’d be free from surveillance.

He sealed up the hole to the jail cell with cobblestone both as a stronger substance than dirt and as a way to identify the place where the staircase was in case he needed to go back for some reason. He moved away from the sound of the crowd, down alleys between buildings.

In a town this size, they were going to have a bell tower somewhere, he thought. It was human psyche thing. Get enough people in one place and someone is going to build a church. All he had to do was get into the church and up into the belltower and take a good look around. Then he’d be set.

He poked his head out of the alley and looked left and right. No one was on the street. In fact it looked like everyone in the whole city was outside the jail screaming for his death. He stepped out of the alley and looked around, scanning the skyline. He saw it not far away, a spire above the other buildings. He looked left and right again, carefully, then walked toward it. He didn’t move quickly or slowly and he didn’t skirt along the sides of the buildings. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

He made a right at the corner, went halfway down the block, and went into the little church. As he closed the door he saw two men wearing helmets round the corner. The guards hadn’t stopped patrolling. He leaned in close to listen for them, wondering if he had sanctuary while he was inside the church.

They passed right outside the door and he heard a snippet of conversation.

“--Got him locked up in the cells.”

“Don’t know where else they would put him.”

“Won’t be long now before the trial.”

“Trial? They’ll stone him to death before any of the builders can speak.”

He shuddered and moved away from the door.

The church was small and unadorned. At the front was a pulpit and what looked like an exaggerated crescent moon made of gold. Player walked down the aisle and past the pulpit. He looked up at the symbol, then down at the altar before it. There was a golden apple resting in a dish. It looked forlorn and solitary.

Player opened his inventory and hefted the bag of gold nuggets. He opened it and let the gold pour into the dish. The nuggets cradled the golden apple. Player bowed his head and clasped his hands. He said a prayer without words. He pictured Herobrine’s face in sleep, smooth and young and without worry, and he asked for that peace again. “Please,” he said.

“Can I help you?” someone said from behind him.

Player jumped and turned. There was a man standing there. He was older than most of the players in the game, possibly the oldest. He was balding but still maintained a full beard and wore a gray cloak over his clothes but nothing more elaborate.

“I need to get into the bell tower,” Player said, “which way do I go?”

The man indicated a door to Player’s left, “it’s not locked.”

Player went through the door and up the rickety stairs three at a time. They ended in a trapdoor and he threw it open. The belltower did not have a bell in it. It was decorative. He stared down at the city. The building he had been imprisoned in was clearly visible. There were still people outside of it.

He was glad he had climbed the tower. What he had assumed was the city gate towards the mountains from the ground actually pointed out to the vast expanse of grassland to the North of the place. The mountains were to the South, on the opposite side of the city.

Player stared at how far away they were. He put his head in his hands and allowed a moment of self-pity, and then he picked his determination and worry back up. He was about to go back down the staircase when he heard the distant sound of a horn being blown.

The screaming of the crowd stopped. There was a moment when everyone turned to look at the Southern gate, and Player felt the collective intake of breath. They all scattered back into houses. The people ran through the streets like rivers, and they were running. They were scared of something. The guards, on the other hand, all started to go towards the gate.

Player had to grin, even if he was more nervous now than he was before. “You’re causing a disturbance, Brine, are you that angry?” Herobrine was furious, and Player knew it without even seeing him. Herobrine was going to rip them apart. He ran back down the stairs, not bothering to close the trapdoor behind him.

There was someone else in the church. A rugged, tanned man with dust smears on his face and clothes. He was talking to the priest, looking pale and scared.

Player ran over, “Father,” he said without thinking.

The priest looked over at him. The other man’s eyes went wide.

“You should find somewhere to hide,” Player said. He started to run past, heading for the door.

The other man pulled something from his back and swung it towards Player’s head. He ducked, surprising himself.

“Joel!” The priest shouted.

Player swung the pickaxe off his back and into a block in one move. The force jerked the weapon from Joel’s hand and sent it spinning across the room.

The old man seized the younger one and held him. “You know the rules!” he said.

Joel struggled against his grip, “This is the prisoner!” he shouted, “he’s the one they caught!”

The priest looked at Player in surprise, “Well I’m sure he’s got an explanation,” he said.

Player chuckled a bit, “My explanation is about to reduce this whole city to ruins and you two along with it unless you hide somewhere.”

“What?” The old man said.

But Player was already out the door, running south towards the wall. There were still a few people in the streets, but they were all worrying about themselves. If any recognized Player, they were too afraid to try to catch him.

The guards were climbing up the walls on ladders. Those on top had their guns trained on the forest before them. They were not looking for anything on their side of the wall.

Player wasn’t sure how he was going to get a good view without alerting the guards, but he saw that there was a building built partially into the wall. It looked like the guards used it a lot, but now they were pouring out of it and up the ladders to the top of the battlements.

Player waited until they were all out, standing behind the corner of a building so no one would see him. When it had been almost a minute and no one else had emerged, he made his way to the building and broke the door in order to enter. He put it back in place behind himself and rushed up the stairs towards the top of the structure.

The building was a break room. There were beds for naps and a kitchen to eat and places to store armor, but most of it was chairs and sofas. He rushed past all this until he came to a floor that extended into the wall itself. On the far end were two narrow slit windows that looked out to the forest and mountains.

Player ran to the windows and looked out. The field and woods seemed to be empty, but someone must have seen something. You did not cry wolf when it came to Herobrine.

He watched and waited, and then he saw it too. There was a rustle of movement in the trees, a flash of blue.

“Herobrine,” he said to himself, like just the name could bring the man to him. Judging by how fast the flash had been, Herobrine was up and moving. That was good for him, bad for everyone in the city. Player didn’t care what happened to everyone in the city.

The flash of blue again, more visible this time. A figure broke from the trees, sprinting toward the wall. It was Herobrine, charging.

Player knew what was going to happen even before it did. There was a volley of shots from above him, so loud and so rapid it sounded like a roar of a great beast. The running figure was hit so many times that it appeared to fly for a moment before hitting the ground.

Player closed his eyes and clamped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He looked back out the window, at the still form in the grass. Not even Herobrine could get up after that.

The figure used one arm to push itself up. It was full of bullet holes, but no blood was coming from them. They were just deep black holes in its face and body. As Player watched, the figure began to walk, and as it did the bullets were left hanging in the air behind it, visible as nothing more than little bronze glints of light from this distance before they dropped to the ground. The face came back and this time Player got a good look at it.

It wasn’t Herobrine. Or, at least, it wasn’t the Herobrine he knew. Herobrine’s face had never been so blank and expressionless, even when he was angry or upset, it never went this flat.

Player lowered his hand as another bulletstorm hit the moving figure. This time it did not even stop walking.

“Hit him!” he heard someone yelling, “someone hit him!”

There was a single resounding boom and a cannonball hit the figure in the stomach. It went flying backwards, the weight of the ball driving it into a deep furrow in the ground.

Player couldn’t help himself, “Stop it!” he screamed. He wasn’t sure the words were even understandable, but the pain and loss in his voice were plain.

There was a heavy pause. Player felt the guards above him look down, as if their gazes had weight. He felt the consciousness in the forest beyond the wall sharpen, could almost see Herobrine breathe in in preparation, and then they came from the trees. There were hundreds. Later Player would learn that up to five hundred were possible, though this was only three hundred. It was still a terrifying sight.

Three hundred Herobrines charged out of the forest and toward the wall on mass.

Someone on the top of the wall screamed just as the gunfire started back up. The bullets were being fired in a panic now, but even if one hit one of the running figured, the thing would get up again.

Player watched in awe as the figures swarmed toward the wall moving in perfect sync, never once breaking stride. When they reached the wall they didn’t try to bash through the gate. Player wasn’t sure what they did exactly to get up on top of the wall, but he heard the sounds of scrabbling hands on the other side of the stone and then screaming erupted from overhead. The guards started flowing back in the other direction, away from the wall and back into the city where they could hide.

Player turned and ran back out of the building. He opened his inventory on the go and almost ran into a wall as he pulled out the gun he had taken from Clarence. It was a beautiful thing, made for one purpose only.

Player paused at the door. He looked at the weapon in his hands. “Trigger,” he said, “safety, magazine,” he popped out the magazine and looked at it, “twenty five rounds.” He slotted it back into place and used the manual mechanism to chamber the first round.

He raised it to his shoulder and tried out the aim. It wasn’t fantastic. There would be no headshots from a great distance with this weapon. It would do.

He pointed it at the back of one of the fleeing guards and pulled the trigger.

The sound made his head ring, but he kept it still and watched the man fall. He was not dead, but he was clutching his leg and screaming.

Savage pleasure leapt through Player. He felt a real grin spread over his face, a homicidal Herobrine-esque grin that anyone in their right mind would have run away from. Revenge was sweet.

He left the building, holding the gun with the barrel toward the ground, and went after the stream of guards. The first building he came to had a sloped roof, and the same with several more, but finally he found one that had a flat roof. He went up the interior stairs. It was an apartment building. He could hear people on the other sides of doors.

He burst onto the roof, barricaded the door behind him, and set the gun on one of the blocks around the flat top. There were still people in the streets, even more now as they were flushed out of their houses by the Herobrine look-alikes. He selected one he vaguely recognized and pulled the trigger. 

The shot was not perfect. He had compensated for hang time as he might have for a bow, but the bullets didn’t need that. Instead of hitting the woman he had aimed for, the bullet ripped into the leg of the man in front of her. He fell with a scream and she fell over him, sprawling in the dirt. Another person went over her, and then another fell, and soon there was a whole group of people fighting to get back to their feet in the middle of the street.

The Herobrine look-alikes descended on them in a rush, doing damage with blades of all materials but Diamond. A few had picked up iron items from somewhere, and some others had obtained guns of a different make than Player’s. The bullets came in continuous roars from their weapons.

Player let them handle that situation and redirected his own aim to another section of the street. Now he was deliberately aiming for legs. He succeeded in creating another pile-up in that area, turned again and made another. The players he hit died screaming at all the demons descended on them. If he hit enough of them, he thought, elicited enough screams, he might be able to drown out the chanting in his head. It was possible.

He pulled the trigger again and again. The grin on his face was starting to look pained. It wasn’t helping. The screaming was just making the chanting louder, and now when he reached for the comforting memories they fled from him.

“The world hates me,” he said to himself, “but so what? I hate the world.” He never thought he’d be back here. He thought he had cured himself of this when the game reset, when he was by himself. He had felt so much better then, and now he was back down there, back down in the hole, with no one to pull him out again.

And Where was Herobrine? He must be alive somewhere. All these doppelgangers had to have come from somewhere. Was he lying in the woods outside the city unable to go any further? Was he on his feet and moving through the streets like all his other selves? Player wasn’t sure. He knew he should go look, but it was cathartic to shoot them in the back, the ones who had screamed at him, and he did not want to stop until they were all dead. There would be time to find Herobrine after they were all dead.

Something heavy landed on the roof behind him.

Player turned, raising the gun as he did, and stopped as the scope landed on a blue chest. He lowered the weapon and looked up at the figure’s face.

It was one of the flat expressionless faces, one of the doppelgangers.

Player wiped his eyes so he could be sure. He hadn’t been aware he was crying. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked the motionless figure.

It didn’t move.

After a moment he turned back to the street and was gratified to find the guard who had put him in the cell before him. He aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger, and the man went down with a bullet in his lower back.

Another sound from behind him, another heavy thud.

“That depends,” said the deep voice, “do you want to die?”

Player dropped the gun. Herobrine was on the ground when he turned, on his knees. There was blood on his clothes and in his hair and drying on his arms and hands. He was taking rapid gulps of air.

“Herobrine,” Player kneeled beside him, but didn’t touch him. “Where did they shoot you?”

A rough chuckle, but the man’s breathing was ragged and he winced. “My back,” he said, “I’m not sure where. Player, I need you to--” he stopped to cough. It brought flecks of blood to his lips.

Player reached out and rubbed the back of his neck tentatively. He wanted to flinch away, but made himself stay steady. Herobrine relaxed at his touch.

“I need you to get them out of my back,” Herobrine said.

“what?”

“There are bullets lodged in my back,” he said, “I-- I can’t reach them.” He was shuddering like he was going to throw up. “I got the ones in my stomach, but I can’t get to the ones…”

Player stepped back away from him. “Brine,” he said, “I can’t do that.”

Herobrine finally raised his eyes, horror on his face. “No! Please…”

“No, I mean,” Player held out his shaking hands, “I’ll just cut you to ribbons if I try.”

Herobrine looked at his hands, studied them, and he looked more closely at Player’s face. “You’ve been beaten.”

Player looked away. He was trying to find a solution to this problem. “Will this help?” he asked, taking the healing potion out of his inventory.

Herobrine shook his head. He sagged a little as another fit of shuddering shook him. “I’ll just throw it up,” he said in jerks, “I need the bullets out! Please!”

“Okay,” Player said, “Okay. Let me think.” He paced around the roof. The blank-faced doppelganger was still there and he had to step around it. The thing wasn’t even breathing.

Another scream from the street. He turned toward it and saw that three players standing back to back, all wielding makeshift weapons, were managing to hold off the two beings trying to kill them. He picked up the gun, aimed at the kneecaps and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times.

A hand pushed the barrel of the gun down, then pulled the gun from his grip. Player glared at the blank face of the doppelganger, “I need that,” he said.

The thing pointed back at Herobrine, jabbing it's finger for emphasis.

Player’s eyes flicked toward the prone figure. Herobrine was in pain, there was no doubt about it. He was shuddering again. But he could not do what the man needed to do. His hands weren’t steady enough. If he tried to pull the bullets out of Herobrine’s back he would just make a mess of his insides. He would nick something important and make everything worse.

And the solution came to him at that moment. He knew who could remove the bullets, and he had put him somewhere safe not two hours ago. He was probably still there.

“Brine,” he said, crouching in front of Herobrine again. He put two fingers under the man’s chin and made him look up into his face. “Brine?”

He jerked again, another cough wracking his frame. His eyes focused. A drop of blood hit Player’s cheek and he wiped it away.

“Can you walk?” Player asked.

Herobrine shook his head.

Player sighed. He stood back up and popped the cap on the healing potion. He drank it, not flinching at the taste. “Where can I pick you up from?” he asked as he knelt again.

“Legs,” Herobrine said simply.

“Okay, okay,” Player looked up at the doppelganger. It was aiming over the edge of the roof, aiming at something in the street below. It pulled the trigger of the gun, and there was an answering scream.

Player leaned down and said, “Put your arms around my neck.”

Herobrine raised his limbs and wrapped them tight around Player’s neck. Player slid his hands under Herobrine’s thighs and lifted him up. He was expecting more weight than he got. Herobrine was unnaturally light. Player hiked him higher up.

Herobrine made a little pained noise, half a scream.

“I know,” Player said, “I know. I’m taking you to get help. Just wait a little longer.”

Herobrine kept his arms around Player’s neck. He relaxed by degrees as Player stood there, adjusting his hold and preparing himself for the task of getting across the city with the burden. The healing potion was erasing the bruises on his body and was lending him extra strength.

“Thank you,” Herobrine said to him.

Guilt tightened around Player. What had taken him so long to help the man? He was ungrateful, a terrible partner. He didn’t deserve thanks. “I’m happy you’re alive,” he said instead. Tears stung his eyes again. Herobrine was alive and back with him. Player turned his head and pressed a kiss into Herobrine’s hair.

“I missed you,” Herobrine said.

Player took a breath. He managed to hold Herobrine up with one hand as he unbarricaded the door he had blocked and opened it. The stairs were just wide enough for Herobrine’s knees and he was careful not to scrape them on the way down.

“Brine,” Player asked, “Are you going to be able to sit still while we help you?”

Herobrine nodded against Player’s neck.

Player opened the door to the building with his hip. He walked out onto the street. There was a scream, then a chorus of screams. He took a deep breath and started walking. He could see the church in the distance. He knew where he was as long as he could see that.

“Steve,” Herobrine murmured.

Player shivered.

“Kiss me again,”

He pressed his mouth to Herobrine’s bloody hair, letting it linger there even though the smell of him was caked over with the blood.

“Thank you,” Herobrine said. “What happened to you?”

Player didn’t reply for a moment. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said with a strangled breath. Grief and guilt were choking him.

Herobrine sighed against him, warming his skin with his breath. He didn’t say anything.

Around them people were screaming and dying. They moved across Player’s path from time to time, running from the monsters behind them, but no one paid him any mind. He was just a survivor, like them, carrying a wounded companion. Herobrine kept his eyes shut tight the whole way. His breathing wasn’t changing, but it was still ragged and shallow. By the time they got to the jail, he was whining in pain with every breath.

“I’m going to put you down for a minute,” Player told him as they stepped into the alley behind the building.

Herobrine nodded again. He lowered his legs from around Player’s waist and set his feet on the ground. He seemed to want to stand up.

Player moved away from him slowly, letting Herobrine take his own body weight by degrees, and then helping to prop him up against the wall. There was something wrong with the man’s left arm. It wasn’t responding as smoothly as it should have been.

When he was steady, Player walked to the cobblestone guarding the entrance to the stairs and removed it from the ground. Herobrine watched him, leaning against the wall. His hand pressed to the stone to keep himself balanced.

The pain was growing worse. Player had been gentle, but he thought that one of the bullets had shifted when he’d raised his arms and was now restricting the movement of his shoulder. He could feel it grinding against this bone.

Player replaced the pickaxe on his back and came back over to him. Herobrine made the mistake of pushing himself away from the wall. His legs started to give way beneath him and Player had to duck fast to catch him and lift him back up. The pain faded again at the touch and he sighed as the human took all of his weight.

Herobrine pressed his face against Player’s neck for the short trip down the stairs and into the cells.

Clarence was still tied to the cot. It had been soaked when Player overturned the bucket on it and his back was soaking. His pants were wet, his shirt was wet, his hair was wet, but the ropes that bound him were not wet. He had struggled against them for a while when he was first bound, but since the screaming had started from above him, loud enough to be heard even through the ground, he had stopped.

So when he heard the footsteps descending down into the earth by the passage Player had left, he resigned himself to his fate. But the footsteps went to the cell beside his, and then there was a voice, Player’s voice.

“Okay,” he was saying, “I’ll be right back. He’s right next door. You’ll be fixed up in no time.”

Then a quiet reply he couldn’t make out, and Player made a “muah” noise, like an exaggerated kiss.

Clarence sat very still. He was fuming. It had not been his fault that Player was stoned and beaten, and he felt he had taken the blame for it.

Player appeared at the bars of the cell. He was shaking badly and there was blood left on his skin in several places including his face. Clarence felt concern override the anger. Player fumbled with the key to the cell, got it into the lock.

He didn’t try to be subtle, “Have you ever performed surgery?” He asked.

Clarence’s brow creased. “Once or twice,” he said, “on animals.”

“If I got you what you needed, could you remove bullets from someone?”

“Probably.” Now he had completely forgotten about being mad. The person in the next cell over was breathing in ragged wet gasps. It sounded bad.

“Clarence,” Player said, “I am so sorry for what I said and did, but he’s in really bad shape, and if I try to help him I’ll just make it worse.”

“What happened?”

“I told you,” Player was making a knife as he spoke, “they shot him. They shot him in the back.” He cut the ropes on Clarence’s legs, then his arms.

“What happened to your bruises?” Clarence asked.

“I drank the healing potion. I had to, or I wouldn’t have been able to carry him back.”

Clarence sat up, “Who is it?”

Player shifted back and forth, “Herobrine.”

Clarence froze. “No,” he said.

“Clarence, I need help.” There was that new look, like Player could offer you the whole world if you just did what he wanted.

Clarence looked away, “But Herobrine, Player, Herobrine! I can’t. He killed Ivy and Bit!”

He felt hands rest on either side of his face, and Player tilted his head up, made him look into his eyes. “Clarence,” he said, “if you truly care about me like you insist, you will do this.”

Clarence just glared at him.

“Please,” Player said, “he’s all I have--all anyone here has--the only one who can help us.”

He said, “No.”

Player’s gaze hardened, “So help me God I will kill you myself if you don’t.” It was the flat tone that did it, no anger, no rage, no screaming, no indication of lost control, just the solemn vow.

Clarence shivered all the way up his spine. Player had told him once that he wouldn’t like Clarence angry, but clearly Player had bigger teeth than he did.

“You won’t like the Nether,” Player said, “the heat and the noise will drive you insane, and I can promise you that when you respawn, I’ll send you right back again, over and over until one of us dies for real.”

“I’ll-- I’ll look,” Clarence said.

The smile again, bright with relief, “Thank you. What will you need?”

“Just tongs,” Clarence said. He was still shaking a little, but Player was shaking worse. Herobrine being nearby was disturbing him more than Clarence thought was healthy.

“Get your circulation back,” Player suggested as he opened his inventory. He started making the tongs without even setting down a crafting table. He handed them over as Clarence finished rubbing feeling into his fingers. “Did I bind you too tight?” He asked.

Clarence shook his head.

Player lead him back to the other cell. Herobrine was on the bed, sitting as straight as he could. He was the one breathing in that wet ragged way. Player dropped down beside him and spoke softly, with such care and warmth in his voice Clarence bristled.

“Brine,” he said, “you ready?”

The man nodded. He let one bloody hand and drop from where he had it pressed against his stomach and ran his fingers through Player’s hair. The pain never left his face, but Clarence saw it ease.

The situation clarified for him. This was not a case of, “Help him because he will kill me if you don’t,” as he had assumed. It was, “Please help him because he is everything good I have in this world.” Clarence closed his eyes, took a breath. When he opened them again Herobrine was looking at him, nervous with recognition.

“This one doesn’t like me,” he said.

“If he hurts you, I’ll put my pick through his back,” Player said calmly.

“You won’t need to,” Clarence assured him, “I’ll make this right.”

Herobrine started shuddering, like he was having a minor seizure. “Hurry,” He managed to say, and then the noise ripped from him, a sound like nothing Clarence had ever heard. It was like metal grating on stone, glass shattering. It was a sound of such pain it almost made him faint.

Player helped him lean forward and cut open the back of Herobrine’s shirt with the knife. He didn’t try to take it all the way off, just left it slit open to expose the man’s back.

“Lay on your stomach,” he said, and Herobrine complied painfully. Player broke a stick over his knee and held one half to Herobrine’s mouth. The man took it, gripped it between his teeth.

Clarence examined his back. There were three entrance wounds. One was high up on the left side of his back, one looked like the shooter had tried to aim for the heart but had missed by a substantial margin. The third was low on Herobrine’s spine and was probably the source of the trembling, so Clarence started there.

He took the knife from Player and positioned it over the soupy red entrance wound

“Ready?” he asked.

Herobrine nodded.

Player dropped to his knees again and watched over Herobrine’s shoulder as Clarence lowered the tip of the knife. Clarence with his delicate steady hands. He had one hand on Herobrine’s right shoulder and as the blade slid into place he felt the man tense. A deep growl rumbled from his chest.

“He’s helping you,” Player reminded him, rubbing his shoulder in slow circles, “we’re helping you.”

Clarence laughed. Player glared at him. 

“This isn’t bad,” he explained, “The bullet hasn’t penetrated far at all. He’s got too much muscle on him for our little guns to do much damage.”

Herobrine muttered something around the stick in his mouth that sounded like, “It did enough.”

Clarence lowered the improvised tongs and pulled a twisted lump of metal from Herobrine’s back. Player was expecting a scream from Herobrine as it happened, but instead there was a sigh of relief.

“Brine?” Player said, worried.

Clarence breathed a low whistle. Player bobbed to his feet and leaned over Herobrine’s prone form to observe. The bullet wound had swollen full of red fibers. As he watched they tightened, pulling the flesh together. A moment later, the wound was a scar, and then not even that. There was just a the expanse of smooth tan skin he had felt on Herobrine’s lower back.

“That would a useful skill,” Clarence remarked.

Player dropped back to his previous position and stroked Herobrine’s hair. “Keep going.”

Clarence removed the second bullet more carefully. It hadn’t penetrated Herobrine’s lung, as he had first thought it had, but it was causing a lot of bleeding. As soon as he pulled it out, Herobrine’s breathing evened out and he got another sigh of relief. This time A smile spread across Player’s face at the sound. Herobrine had put one hand on his arm to keep him from springing up again and Player was running fingers over the inside of his wrist where Clarence could not see.

The third bullet was the problem.

“Shit,” Clarence said after he had widened the wound.

“What?” Player asked.

“It’s lodged in under the scapula,” Clarence said, “I can get it, but it’s going to hurt like hell.”

Player looked down at Herobrine. The man let go of his arm. Instead he gripped the metal legs of the cot in his hands.

“Shoulders,” he said around the wood in his mouth.

Player stood and put all of his weight on Herobrine’s upper arms, Leaning forward awkwardly over his head. He gave a nod to Clarence.

“On three,” the man said, reaching the tongs into Herobrine at an odd angle. “One--” he looked at Player, nodded. Player rocked forward and Clarence pulled without saying another number. There was a screech of friction and a scream of agony. The wood in Herobrine’s mouth cracked, and the legs of the cot shrieked over the stone floor. The bullet came free.

This time there was no sigh of relief, only a long whimper followed by Herobrine tugging urgently at Player’s leg. He had a hand clamped over his mouth and was pointing at the bucket on the other side of the cell.

Player ran across the room and put it in Herobrine’s outstretched hand. He pulled his hand away from his mouth, spat the wood shards into the bucket, and waited. A moment later his whole body heaved and he vomited into the bucket. Clarence took two steps back in shock. Player rubbed the back of Herobrine’s neck as he retched, his face breaking with empathy. When the he was done dry heaving, Player took the bucket without looking inside and pressed a kiss onto Herobrine’s forehead.

He shot Clarence a glance as he walked past him, “Stay here.”

Herobrine stayed where he was, eyes closed, for a minute. Then he sighed and sat up. The wounds on his back were completely gone. He fixed Clarence with a level blank gaze. He was still coated in his own blood and looking at him made the man nervous.

Herobrine pulled the remains of his shirt off, exposing a torso that made Clarence feel a little weak at the knees for reasons apart from his fear. He said, “What happened?”

Clarence blinked, “What do you mean?”

“What happened to St--Player?”

Clarence looked down.

“You don’t like me.”

“I’m afraid of you.”

“You should be, but you care for Player so you’re putting that aside.”

“He loves you,” Clarence said, “and I thought I was in love with him. I was the one who sent the guards after him. I owe it to him.”

“So tell me what happened.”

Clarence shook his head, “It’s not pretty.”

“He’ll never tell me on his own, and I need to know.”

Clarence shook his own bloody fingers, leaving a pattern of droplets on the floor. He started talking, almost whispering, fast.

Player left through the door he had barricaded with obsidian. He wasn’t sure what to do with the bucket of vomit, so he left it outside the door to the street and went on his way. He needed a few minutes alone. As much as he wanted to be around Herobrine, taking care of anyone who was injured was emotionally draining. He wandered through the stories of the building. It was the equivalent of a police station.

Player found a locked room and assumed it was where illegal items were kept. He broke down the wall to the side of the door and entered the room that way. He dug through the chests on the walls and soon enough found what he was looking for. He had to search to find enough, but they were there. After a bit of thought he reached the conclusion ender pearls could be used to make a quick getaway if the suspect had good aim, so they were confiscated.

He returned to the basement cells, pulling the blaze rods out of his inventory as well. He did counts of both resources. He was going to have extra blaze powder. It was going to be close.

Herobrine was chewing on something as he returned. He looked tired and sore. There was still blood on his skin and in his hair. He had taken off the ruined shirt, exposing his chest and stomach. Once it might have made Player nervous, but having done what they had already it didn’t have much effect. 

Herobrine swallowed and flicked a grin towards Player. “Do I get a show if I lock you in a cage too?”

Player glared at Clarence, aware he was turning pink.

“I didn’t tell him,” Clarence said, “I didn’t!”

“No,” He said to Herobrine. He looked around the cells, but there was no crafting table here. He started making one. He felt Herobrine glance away from him, looking at Clarence as if to say, “See?”

“Is there water nearby?” Player asked Clarence.

He shook his head.

“I want to leave this place anyway,” Player said, “this part won’t take long.” He sat on the cot beside Herobrine and placed the crafting table before him. Instantly an arm wrapped around him. There was no insistent tug, just the embrace and then Herobrine’s head against his. Player took a breath, looking for a smell of sickness, of vomit, and instead found apple on the man’s breath. He turned into the contact a little, letting himself relax into the intimacy.

“Where’d you find those?” Herobrine asked as he laid out the ender pearls. He pulled back and took another bite of fruit.

“Upstairs,” Player laid a hand on Herobrine’s knee for a moment. It was as much of the contact as he could bring himself to return.

Herobrine knew it must have taken an effort to even do that much and pressed a kiss to the back of Player’s neck.

Clarence was still in the room, but it was like he didn’t exist. There was no one in the world but Herobrine and Player right then, and they were in a bubble of solitude no one could penetrate.

Clarence watched as Player took out the book out of his inventory. Herobrine finished the apple and put his other arm around the man, eyes closed. Player opened the book, flipped to a certain section and read a passage one-handed. His other hand strayed to Herobrine again, his arm, his cheek beside Player’s.

“You and your big words,” he said to Herobrine.

“It’s not complicated.”

Player grumbled to himself.

Clarence took a step toward them, daring to invade their space. Herobrine’s eye opened and flashed a warning at him.

“What’s that book?” he asked anyway.

Player glanced up at him. His hand dropped from Herobrine’s cheek and clenched in his lap. “It’s a guide,” he said, “to the game.”

Clarence’s eyes widened, “What? Where did you get that?”

Player leaned backwards into Herobrine but made no other reply. He closed the book, “Let me move around, Brine.”

Herobrine released him and Player went about making what he had to. It was a quick process, and Clarence didn’t see exactly what he did, but when he was done the ender pearls were glowing a toxic light green and Player was brushing golden dust off of his palms.

Herobrine yawned, covering his mouth with one hand. He looked at the things in Player’s hands. “How many do you have?”

“17.”

“That’s cutting it close.”

“I have extra blaze powder. I can make more if I need to.”

Herobrine looked up at the ceiling, “It’s done,” he said, slightly disappointed.

“They’re all dead then?” Player asked.

“Not dead,” Herobrine reminded him, “just out of commission for a while.”

“I want them to be dead.” Player looked up at Clarence, snapping out of his trance. He looked down at the book before him, then up at the man again. “Brine,” he said, “you’re trying to get everyone to beat the game, right?”

“Eventually.”

Player opened the book, tore out the first page, and held out the remaining volume to Clarence. He took it, looking at the blank cover.

“Let’s leave,” Player said to Herobrine, “I’m exhausted and I want to be gone.”

Herobrine nodded and stood up, “We should find somewhere to wash the blood off.”

“We will.”

Player was first onto the street. Clarence had stayed behind at a glare from Herobrine. He pulled an Eye of Ender from the stack and tossed it into the air. It hung motionless for a moment above him, then shot northward, away from the mountains.

“Great,” Player said to himself.

“That’s where you put it,” Herobrine said, looking down at the bucket of his own vomit.

“I had to put it somewhere.” He ran forward and caught the Eye of Ender as it dropped out of the air. It was intact.

One of the doppelgangers wandered by, listless.

“Missed one,” Herobrine said. The thing froze mid-step and dissolved into black snow.

“What are they?” Player asked.

Herobrine joined him in the street. He was pulling his semi-intact shirt back on over his head, but as soon as that was done he took Player’s hand. The man gave his fingers a squeeze as they started walking. “They’re called Buds,” Herobrine confessed.

“Why?”

“Budding is a way that some animals reproduce. It produces genetically identical offspring.”

Player made a face, “That’s disturbing.”

“They’re not actually buds. They’re more shadows of me. If I’m wounded, they can do my work for me, and then later I can recall them.”

“They’re immortal too,” Player said, recalling the one bud who had gotten up after being hit with a cannon ball.

“In a way,” Herobrine agreed, “they’re just not alive at all. I was going to show them to you eventually, but it never seemed like a good time.”

“It scared me to see one get shot with a cannon, but I figured out it wasn’t you pretty fast.”

They reached the city gate, and Player let his free hand touch the stone bricks around it.

“This is all my stone, you know,” he said, “I gave it to them. I didn’t think this would happen.”

“You haven’t asked about the wolf,” Herobrine remarked.

“I saw what happened to Sam. I don’t need to ask.” He shuddered.

There was silence for a long moment, their hands still clasped between them.

“Clarence told me what happened,” Herobrine said.

Player closed his eyes, “Then I don’t have to tell you.”

“No, you don’t.”

His hand clenched into a fist against the wall and Player shuddered. He brushed at the dried blood on his face and it flaked off onto his palm. “Yes,” he said suddenly.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I want to die.”

Herobrine tugged on his hand and pulled him through the gate out into the open grassland beyond. “I know,” he said.

“Let’s find somewhere safe. I’m tired.”

Herobrine pulled Player to him in a hug. The human buried his face in his chest, but didn’t cry. That made Herobrine worry more than anything else.

“I can’t help you,” He told Player, “I don’t know how.”

A nod into his chest. “I just need to beat the game, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I can do that,” Player said, pulling away. He kissed Herobrine on the mouth, barely a peck, and said, “You’re helping.”

Herobrine kissed him in return, a little longer, but Player pushed him back.

“I hate apples,” he said.

Herobrine smiled, “Let’s just go find a lake to wash this blood off.”

Player nodded.

“We could probably have gotten water from a well and used that,” Herobrine pointed out.

“I never want to set foot in there again,” Player announced. He took Herobrine’s hand again as they walked. If he could just hold onto Herobrine, he would be able to keep the monsters at bay.


	60. Accelerate (we don't have forever)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point in writing this fic, I had only a few weeks to finish it. So things were rushed. I still think it turned out okay.

Recording decoded from radio static by A personel, 4 November 2011

“Tell me, how many levels are there before the final level?”

“No one knows that.”

“Then how do we know that we ourselves are not dreaming?”

“We won’t until we wake up.”

* * *

Inside the mountains was beauty and warmth, around the mountains were forests and stretches of grassland, and beyond the grassland was snow. It was not snow that topped mountains and made the sun sparkle off the trees, but deep frozen icy snow that had long ago hardened on the ground until nothing could penetrate it.

Sometimes there was warmth. A lone house someone had made that could be heated, a skeletal tree that could be used for firewood, but for the most part there was nothing but, ice, snow, and rock.

It took Player a little over three days to reach the place where the grass turned white underfoot and cracked like glass when you stepped on it. He stood on the edge of the ice, looking at the miles and miles of wasteland before him, and shivered. It seemed oddly applicable that this was where The End would be found.

Herobrine was not there. He had gone to destroy more settlements, to awake more people to their situation, and Player had gone on alone. He could not stop going now, to stop would allow the fear inside him to catch up, to allow The Monster to swallow him whole. If he could beat the game, he believed, he knew, that he would be safe from it. The Monster existed only inside the game.

But he could not go ahead into the tundra without preparing, so he stopped. He spent a day gathering supplies and finding ways to stay warm. Herobrine didn’t return during that time, which was normal.

He threw one of the Eyes of Ender up into the air, just to be sure he was going the right way, and set off into the tundra.

The snow under the first powdery layer had hardened enough that he didn’t break through the crust when he walked on it. He had been walking for about an hour when Herobrine joined him without warning. He broke right through the crust on the snow and yelped as he sank down to his knees in the semi-powdery substance beneath.

Player half-smiled at what once would have made him break down into giggles and helped him out of the hole. “Hey, Brine.”

“Hello, Stevie. How’re you feeling?”

“Not good,” Player admitted. He put his arms around Herobrine’s chest and squeezed tight. It wasn’t a romantic kiss-me hug; he just needed the physical contact to assure himself he wasn’t alone.

Herobrine’s face creased with worry where Player couldn’t see it, but he was tired already and couldn’t work up the nerve to ask the man what was wrong. He held Player for a few seconds, then pulled away with a shiver.

“I’ll find us somewhere warm,” Player said, “then we can rest.” A little of the light had returned to his eyes. He felt a little livelier, even as the cold stripped what warmth the embrace had given to his skin. His cheeks were already rosy and his lips were chapped.

“There should be a place ahead,” Herobrine said, “there was a small settlement there. They fled before I could reach them, so I left the buildings alone.”

Player’s face lit up even more, “A real house would be incredible.”

Herobrine felt his heart melt a little. He pointed out the right direction and lagged behind a little at Player leapt over the hardened snow. The only reason the man had been able to carry him in the city was because his weight was reduced by blood loss and creating The Buds. He was at risk of going down under the surface again.

The town came into sight a little over an hour later. Player ran to the nearest door and threw it open. He disappeared inside, his pack already coming down off his shoulder. Herobrine had retrieved it out of the bunker for him when he had last been with Player. It was a minor thing, and the human was not in the best spirits.

“Brine!” he called down to him, “I think there are hot springs in here!”

Herobrine completely melted then, in a preemptive way. He was going to enjoy this.

The whole building was steaming a little in the cold, but the spring room was the warmest and the air filled with vapors when he opened the door.

Player winced at the cold. He was already down to his normal clothes, which had been obscured under layers of thick woolen things he had made himself.

Herobrine watched in fascinated silence while he removed his shirt, then his jeans. His fingers and toes were red with cold and he was still shivering, but he was easy on the eyes anyway. He thought that effect would probably fade as he was around the human for longer periods of time, but for now he was going to enjoy it.

Player looked over his shoulder and smiled at him. That was one thing the human had kept: his confidence with his own body. Herobrine thought it was a good starting place. Then Player slid his underwear off and Herobrine stopped thinking about anything until he had seated himself on the edge of the pool and was dragging his toes in the water.

Herobrine pulled off his own clothes and joined Player at the edge of the pool. He tested the water, then slid down into it easily. It wasn’t that warm, not compared to The Nether.

Player frowned at him but didn’t say anything.

Herobrine scooped up a handful of water and splashed Player’s face. He squeaked, then laughed, his first time since he had been taken from the bunker.

“You’ll pay for that,” he said to Herobrine, reaching down to splash him back.

“Come on,” he stood in the shallow water and lifted Player up.

“Brine!” he squirmed in Herobrine’s hold, still laughing a little, as Herobrine submerged them both in the steaming water. “That’s not fair,” he protested, rubbing his hands over Herobrine’s hair.

“You were taking too long,”

“I was taking as long as I needed to,” Player stopped talking as Herobrine kissed him on the cheek. He stood up in the water, “My feet are all tingly.”

“You need better shoes,”

“My shoes are fine,” Player shivered and sat down on the bench at the edge of the pool, sliding down so his whole body was in the warm water.

Herobrine sat beside him, but stayed farther out of the water. He laid an arm across the tile behind Player but didn’t touch the human again.

Finally Player said, “Do you want to talk about being shot?”

Herobrine shook his head, “There’s not much to talk about. I walked outside, called the wolf, they started shooting at me and I was hit.”

“That’s it?”

“The person who shoot me in the stomach instead of the back looked at me while he did it, but that’s about it.”

“And it doesn’t haunt you?”

“No,” Herobrine shifted to get more comfortable in the water, “I’ve been slashed open so many times it’s lost its charm. Bullets are inconvenient, but arrows aren’t much better, and I’ve been a pincushion once or twice.”

Player looked troubled at that, “How old are you?”

Herobrine looked at him, “Will it matter?”

Player shrugged, “Probably not.”

“Then why ask?”

“I’m curious.”

“Well if he can still be curious he’s not totally gone.” Herobrine thought. He said, “I’ll tell you someday, just not right now.”

Player was the one who leaned against his chest. It wasn’t a lot of contact, but it was better than nothing. “If you say so.”

He let it rest for a minute, then said, “Do you want to talk about anything?”

Player shook his head hard.

“If you don’t talk about it it’ll just stew inside you,” he was almost used to the texture of Player’s hair now, but right then it was still cold and damp, water running from it over the man’s face.

“I don’t think I can talk about it,” Player said.

“You shouldn’t go any farther until you have,” Herobrine said, “if you try to go into The End with that much pain--”

Player pushed away from him, “I have to,” he said, “I have to! Don’t you see? It’ll eat me alive if I look at it. I can’t let it eat me.” He was looking at Herobrine with his strange violet eyes, wide and trusting and afraid.

“Steve,” Herobrine growled the name. He saw the effect it had on Player, the way it smoothed the lines on his face, “let’s get out of the water to talk about this.”

Player nodded. He climbed out of the pool and padded off to find towels or blankets they could dry themselves off with. When they were dry--blankets, not towels, and scratchy blankets at that--they found their way upstairs to a room directly above the hot spring. It made it much warmer than the rest of the building. It had been a small common room at one point, and the furniture was still intact.

Herobrine chose a wide sofa for the conversation. They could face each other across its length and not feel too intimate, or they could sit side-by-side and watch a fire burn in the hearth. The fire was set and the dampness in the air began to lessen. Their hair was still wet, so that was probably for the better. Herobrine sat at one end of the couch and Player moved next to him. This time Herobrine put his arm around his waist to keep him close.

“Tell me about the monster,” he said after a few minutes.

“It’s big and it’s behind me,” Player said, “and it wants to eat me. If I stop moving, it will catch up.”

He had been right to nip this in the butt before it got out of hand. “What’s the monster made of?”

There was a long pause, “The crowd. The screaming of the crowd. They were calling me this thing over and over, and it was bad because it was true, and the way they said it…”

Herobrine said nothing. This was the second time now he had taken a confession from Player, the second time he had lifted something from the man. He knew how it went, he thought, but after a few seconds he asked, “What was it?”

Player said the two words in a rush, so fast Herobrine didn’t catch them.

“One more time,” he prompted Player, “slowly.”

“Monster fucker,” the human managed. He pulled away from Herobrine’s arm and pulled his knees up to his chest.

Herobrine was speechless. He hadn’t known that, not specifically. The man had had that driven into his psyche: the sound of almost a thousand people all screaming that what he had done was a disgusting abhorrent thing to do.

“I should have ripped them apart,” Herobrine said with feeling.

Player looked at him, nodded a little.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “they said that, but you still carried me to get help, and a few minutes ago we were cuddling.”

Player nodded again.

“Before,” Herobrine said, “that’s what you were afraid of, touching me, but that hasn’t come back.”

“I’m happy with you,” Player said, “ If I am what they called me, I’m like that because of happiness, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Herobrine saw him relax. Some of the tension left his shoulders.

“What I’m afraid of is the gun,” Player said, “because you were wounded and sitting right there next to me, and instead of picking you up I grabbed the gun and shot three of them--” his voice broke and it took him a minute to regain control, “I was so angry it clouded me. Did you hear what I said to Clarence? I threatened him. I actually told him I would kill him.”

“Are you looking at the monster now?” Herobrine asked him.

Player nodded.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like me,” Player said. He wiped a palm across his eyes. He reached out and accepted Herobrine’s embrace, leaned into his chest and hid his face against him. He was a scared child, finally able to cling to support.

“Tell the monster why you did those things,” Herobrine suggested.

Player closed his eyes, his face buried in the blue shirt. He looked at the monster, the thing he was running from. It wasn’t so big, he thought, not with Herobrine to lean against.

“I did it because I was angry,” he said, “they took someone I cared about and ripped him apart, and I heard them, and even though he was right in front of me I wanted to hurt them so much in that moment--”

“Did they deserve it?” asked the rational voice.

Player nodded, “They did,” he said, “they all did.” Then he said, “They were afraid and they were looking for someone to vent it on, but it doesn’t make what they did better.”

The monster before his eyes shrank a little. Now, he thought, it would only be able to bite off his head, not swallow him whole.

“And me?” Herobrine asked, “what about me?”

“I knew you were hurt, but I let you suffer anyway, for those few seconds. I was trying to reach you and I got sidetracked. It was the wrong thing to do, and I’ll never make up for it.”

A kiss on his forehead, “I forgive you. I am not indestructible, but I appear to be. You put others’ destructibility before mine, that was all, and you did help me.”

The monster shrank again. It was the size Player was now, looking at him through his own eyes. It was somehow more eerie.

“And Clarence,” Herobrine prompted, his voice soft and almost seductive.

“Clarence,” Player repeated, and he said, “he was like the crowd. He was wrong for the right reasons, but he was still wrong, and I did a terrible thing to get out of that cell, and I tied him up, and when I came back I threatened to kill him. I think he understands, sort of, but I feel so dirty.”

“I’ll tell you what Clarence told me while you were digging for Ender Pearls,” Herobrine said, “he told me he was the one who tipped the guards off. He said he was sorry, that he had to make it up to you somehow, that he never intended any of it to happen. I think he had already forgiven you when we left.”

“And you?” Player asked, “I stripped in front of him. I told him awful lies about you to get out of that cell. Can you forgive me?”

“Steve, you had to break out somehow. I wouldn’t have been able to reach you in the cell. There is nothing to forgive.”

Player opened his eyes and looked at Herobrine. There weren’t tears in them anymore.

“Where’s the monster now?” Herobrine asked.

“In front of me,” Player said, “small enough to put in my pocket.”

“Leave it there,” Herobrine suggested, “to get rid of it, you’ll need help from someone more qualified than me.”

“I think that was the best counseling I’ll ever get about anything,” Player said, “you’re good at it.”

“Seems I’m good at everything,” Herobrine teased him.

Player’s smile was back in force, “Except for finding people.”

“I am clumsy at that,” Herobrine admitted. “I missed your smile.”

“I missed smiling,” Player laid his head on Herobrine’s chest.

“Why aren’t you afraid of this anymore?” Herobrine asked.

That was one question Player could answer, “Because I’m happy here,” he said, “and being happy drives away fear like nothing else.”

Herobrine kissed his cheek again, “Did you see any beds in this place?”

“Down the hall.”

“Let’s have our morning together tomorrow,” Herobrine said, “and dinner together tonight. I almost forgot, I have something special.”

Player perked up. He watched the item form in Herobrine’s hands, collecting out of black snow.

“Strawberries!” he exclaimed.

Herobrine took one from the basket and pressed it to Player’s lips. He took a bite, eyes closing in bliss as he chewed. It was a little tart on the edges, but inside was that sweet delicate flavor he had been craving for so long. He chewed as slowly as he could, then opened his eyes.

Herobrine was looking at him with such love it almost made him dissolve. There was intense longing and need written all over him. Player could feel the ache forming in his own chest just looking at him.

Instead of kissing Herobrine, Player took another strawberry and returned the favor of feeding it to his partner. Herobrine made the contact linger as long as he could, as if their legs weren’t intertwined already. His bite left a spot of red juice on his mouth, reminding Player too much of the blood that had spattered the man’s lips as he coughed. He wiped it away.

Finally he kissed Herobrine, his mouth, his cheek, the side of his neck, pulling from him a delicious sound of pleasure. He shivered and pulled back. 

Herobrine swallowed the strawberry. He gave Player that look again, then his expression changed. “Tell me the blankets on the beds are softer than the ones downstairs.”

Player smiled, “Not really,” he said, “but there are sheets.”

“Great,” Herobrine groaned.

“I’m tired enough to sleep no matter now scratchy the blanket is.”

“Good for you.”

“And you,” Player pressed his hands to Herobrine’s chest, “you’re stressed.”

“Am I?”

“You are. You hate doing what you have to do.”

Herobrine put the basket of strawberries aside. He swung his legs onto the couch and laid down properly on the cushions. Player settled down too, partially on top of him. Herobrine wrapped his arms around him. 

“This helps,” He said.

In the end, they stripped a bed and slept on the couch under the sheets and blankets, full of strawberries and warmth.

In the morning, they laid still for a long time. Player was the first one to speak, though had they were both awake, “There’s the other half,” he said.

“The other half of what?”

“The perfect night.”

“That will come later,” Herobrine assured him, “Sit up.”

Player did, disentangling their bodies. The air outside of the blankets felt cold. Herobrine stretched languidly, rolling his neck and shoulders. Player heard his joints pop. Seeing Herobrine relaxed and comfortable was its own reward.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much.”

Then it was back to walking. Herobrine stayed behind to rest a bit more, assuring Player that he would catch up soon. He had nothing else to do. There was a goodbye kiss, and Player wrapped himself up in his woolen clothes.

It was still cold outside, freezing cold. He wrapped a scarf around his mouth and nose to protect him from it.

From where he was, he didn’t know which direction he needed to go, so he threw another Eye of Ender. It hung in the air, then shot off to the North. Player tried to catch it, but he missed, and it bounced into the snow as it fell, remaining intact. He snatched it up and dusted the snow off it. The black pupil of the eye stared back at him, but it wasn’t disturbing anymore.

“Okay,” he said, “North again.”

So he walked, and walked, and walked, until his toes were tingling in his shoes, and then he kept walking because if he stopped he might freeze to death. Herobrine didn’t appear again for a long time, and Player knew he hadn’t slept the night before. He must have laid awake most of the night, holding Player while he slept. When he did appear, he walked beside Player, cracking through the hardened layer of snow at irregular intervals. He didn’t have any protective clothing, but it didn’t seem to bother him, and his breath billowed in the air. They didn’t speak. Player had no breath to say anything.

After almost an hour, Herobrine tugged on his arm.

“Throw another,” he said.

Player took one of his fourteen remaining Eyes and tossed it into the air. It hung directly overhead for a moment, then drifted a little to the right, about three meters, and slammed downward into the ground so hard it broke on impact.

Player jumped. “What?!”

Herobrine grinned, “We’re here.”

“It’s here?!” He dropped to his knees and peering into the round whole the eye had made in the snow.

“Go on, miner, dig.”

Player started scooping away he snow. He widened the hole the eye had made in the snow crust and dug until he revealed the ground. There was no dirt here, only stone. “I just have to dig?” he asked.

“Yes,” Herobrine took a couple steps back. He watched Player mine out the first steps of stone blocks, creating a spiral staircase downwards into the earth.

The human popped back up out of the ground a couple minutes later.

“I’m going to build a roof over this,” he said, “So it doesn’t fill back up with snow.”

Herobrine nodded, but he didn’t help Player construct the wooden covering. The human set several torches burning. If it were dark outside, the structure would shine like a beacon in the black landscape.

Then Player started really burrowing downwards. He went down and down and down, and started wondering where this was going.

Then there were stone bricks before him instead of regular stone, and the next thing he knew he was stepping into a passageway.

“Brine!” he called up the stairs, “I found something!”

A few blocks above him, Herobrine closed his eyes. He could do this. He had to do this. Sure enough, Player had found the a fortress. He was putting up fresh torches along the walls. The caves were even colder than the outside was, but the human was less bothered by this chill. He was sort of used to it after all.

“You should make that enchanting table now,” Herobrine said.

“What’s the point if there aren’t bookshelves?”

“There’s a library in here somewhere.”

Player’s eyes sparkled in the torchlight, “Let’s find it.” He tried to take Herobrine’s hand.

“Not right now,” the man said, stroking the inside of his wrist to make the rejection sting less.

Player nodded, it was fair. He walked ahead down the hallway, lighting it up as he went along. He turned a corner and was faced with a much smaller passageway guarded by two chests. Digging through them revealed nothing particularly useful, and since now he knew where they were, he let them be. Beyond that was another passageway to the left and a staircase that led down a floor.

Player glanced at Herobrine, “I’ll go left, you go down?”

“Fine.”

They both moved in their directions. Player walked down the hallway for a long time, his footsteps echoing hollowly down the passage before him. There were no mobs here, he noted. There was nothing here except dust and stillness.

Then he came to the library. It loomed in an arched entranceway, the shelves stretching back into darkness. Player stepped into it, and directly into an unseen cobweb. He swiped it away from his face and spent a moment brushing down his whole body in an attempt to remove the sensation. When he was done with that he swiped the torch in his hand before him. Several cobwebs hissed as the flame touched them.

“Great,” Player said. He walked into the library tentatively, clearing the cobwebs as he went. He looked at the spines of the books, but he could not read a single title. The lettering that hadn’t been degraded past the point of legibility was written in a strange language he could not read. He pulled one from the shelf anyway. The whole book was illegible.

He chose a dark corner of the library, lit it up, and moved a row of bookshelves to the right angle so the place for the enchanting table was set up. He walked all the way down to the other end of the library and tried to find a book that was still intact for the enchanting table. He was flipping through one with most of the binding still intact when Herobrine slid his arms around his waist and kissed the back of his neck.

“What’ve you got there?” he asked.

“Some book I can’t read. Can you?”

He felt the man go up on tiptoes to look at it over his shoulder. “No.”

“Well, it’s intact. It’ll work.” He snapped it closed and stepped out of his arms and went back to the crafting table on the other side.

Herobrine leaned against a bookshelf while he crafted it.

“Steve,” he said, “can you make yourself armor?”

Player checked his inventory, “Probably not. I don’t really want any.”

“It’ll be difficult to win without any.”

“I can dodge. I’m light on my feet.”

Herobrine made a noise that suggested he knew differently, and Player had a brief flash of memory that must have been what Herobrine was picturing. He turned around and looked at Herobrine, “And you were so graceful,” he said sweetly.

He was gratified when Herobrine flushed pink. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he muttered.

Player smirked as he went back to making the crafting table, whistling a little as he completed the task. “There we go,” he slid the completed enchanting table into place. “Should I bother enchanting my pick?”

“Yes. Efficiency, as high as you can get.”

“I’m not sure I can force that.”

“I can do it tomorrow,” Herobrine said, “the really important thing is downstairs.”

Player left the library and hurried down the steps before Herobrine, excited to see it. He found the room easily enough. The frame sat above a pool of lava and could be reached by a set of stairs. There were two mob-spawners set into the base of the altar, but Herobrine had disabled them.

“What were those?” Player asked.

“Silverfish,” Herobrine shuddered.

“The End Portal,” Player mounted the steps on the altar and looked at it. “There are already four eyes in here.”

“A few spawn with it,” Herobrine said, “I think it was to make it obvious what you’re supposed to do.”

Player crouched at the edge of the portal. He took an Eyes of Ender from his inventory and started to set it in place.

“Wait!” Herobrine said.

“What?” Player looked back at him.

“Do that tomorrow,” Herobrine said, “Go into it on a night’s rest and fully prepared.”

Player walked down the stairs again and put his arms around Herobrine’s neck, “You just want to sleep with me again.” He wasn’t going to complain.

“No. You need to be rested. It’s not an easy task.”

“What do I have to do in there anyway?” Player asked.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. There’s a high chance you’ll die while trying to do it though.”

“If I die doing that, will I go to the Nether?”

Herobrine looked above his head, thinking about it. “I’m not sure.”

“I’d prefer not to go there, not with all those people.”

“I know. If you do die, I’ll come get you and you can try again right away. That’s fair.”

Player nodded, “You’re not making any of this easy, you know.”

“If I made it easy, it might not work,” Herobrine said, and then tried to erase the slip up by kissing Player.

“What might not work?” Player asked anyway.

“After tomorrow you’ll understand.” He pulled away from the embrace, “Let’s find you a set of armor.”

“I won’t wear it,” Player said,

“A diamond sword then?”

“I used my last two diamonds on the enchanting table. I haven’t looked yet but there won’t be any here.”

Herobrine sighed, “Steve, how are you this low on resources?”

“I’m not,” Player protested, “I have food, iron, my sleeping stuff. I can survive. I didn’t have time to prepare before I ran.”

“Then let’s prepare,” Herobrine said, “and make you a bow and arrows at least. You’re good with those.”

“I still have the gun,” Player admitted.

Herobrine gave an annoyed huff. He walked back out into the corridor, looked down the dark section of hallway to the left.

“What?” Player asked.

“Will you wear any armor?” Herobrine said.

“Leather is okay,” Player said, “I had a set somewhere, but I think it burned in the house. Anything heavier just slows me down.”

Herobrine made another irritated noise, “You’re impossible.” He started pulling leather out of the air, grumbling the whole time.

Player watched for a while without speaking. “I’m going to go explore the rest of this place,” he said finally, “find a place to set up for the night.”

Herobrine nodded. “Steve,” he said as Player started walking. Player looked back at him, and Herobrine pushed a stack of leather into his hands. “Make yourself armor,” he said, “and never tell anyone I gave you that. It’s an advantage, if a small one.”

“Thank you,” Player said, annoyed that even this was seen as fair or unfair. He just had to assume Herobrine was doing it like that for a reason, even if he didn’t like it.

“Just make sure you enchant it,” Herobrine said, “or it’ll be useless.”

“I will,” Player leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. He felt Herobrine melt at the touch. Even after all this, he could still make him melt.

“And you’re getting a bow,” Herobrine growled, “A good one.”

“Fine by me,” Player said, “I’d rather not use the gun anyway.”

“I know. You’ll want a ranged weapon. I did.”

“Thank you,” Player said again.

“And you can jump through that thing first thing in the morning,” Herobrine promised, “it won’t be a whole day event, but you want to be rested.”

“Right,” Player said, “rest with you in my sleeping bag.”

“You slept like a rock last night.”

“I was tired last night,” they were walking now, Player lighting their way as they went with fresh torches.

“You’ll be tired when you go to sleep today,” Herobrine promised him.

Player took his hand again, and this time Herobrine gripped him back with enough force to make Player wince. When the pressure didn’t let up after that, he knew Herobrine was holding on to him on purpose, afraid he was going to slip through his fingers. Player hadn’t known he had scared the man that much with his speech the night before, but that was all he could think of that would prompt this anxiety. He made himself a promise never to scare Herobrine that badly again.


	61. The End?

Some people can’t remember the time before the game, they claim. I’ve always thought I know why. The Dragon waits for us all in our minds, and for some of us it is many times our own size. It’s best to barricade such a beast out of one’s mind or rist total collapse. Of course, there’s always the question, what is The Dragon? When I am forced to open the doors of my mind, will I be able to lock it back up again?

* * *

“You won’t come with me?” Player said.

Herobrine shook his head. He was sitting on the stone steps leading up to the portal, chin in the palm of one hand.

“In relation to The Nether, how much more dangerous is this?”

“Three or four times worse.”

Player froze. He was fitting the leather armor over his clothes. The items were shimmering with new enchantments increasing their durability and protectiveness. He looked up at the man, “Really?”

“Yes,” Herobrine stood up and walked the few steps to him. He took the helmet out of Player’s hands and dropped it onto his head. It landed askew, covering one of his eyes. 

Player glared at him as he straightened it. The standoffishness from the day before was still affecting Herobrine even though he had taken a break from it during the night. Player was grateful; he had slept soundly.

“Do you have enough arrows?” Herobrine asked.

“I think so.”

“That’s your best weapon against it. Don’t be afraid to waste a couple as a deterrent.”

“Are you sure you won’t come?” He finished securing the chestplate and pulled his shirt down to stop it bunching beneath it.

“I can’t help you.”

“I don’t want help. I want company.”

A smile touched Herobrine’s mouth, “You’ll be fine.”

“So you say,” he sighed.

“Want a hug before you go?”

Player raised his arms. He couldn’t feel Herobrine through the armor, and for a moment he considered taking it off, but the stuff was such a hassle to get on it wasn’t worth it.

He thought about passing up on the challenge, hollowing out a place for them underground and staying a while, but they had already been down that road. Nothing good would come of that.

Herobrine kissed his cheek. “For good luck,” he said.

Player closed his eyes for a moment. He tucked his head down against him. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Herobrine released him and walked up the stone steps with him. Player knelt and slid the Eyes of Ender into place. They fitted into the portal frames with a soft pop and would not come back out.

When he placed the last one, the lava below the frame was obscured by a mask of twinkling stars in a night sky.

“I just jump in?” Player asked. He dropped a rock down into it, but no sound came back.

Herobrine felt himself starting to weaken. He was going to pull Player back from the edge any second, force him to stay, and he could not do that.

Player felt a hard shove in the center of his back. He stumbled forward. His foot slipped on one of the eyes, and he fell into the portal.

Behind him Herobrine wrapped his arms around his own stomach, feeling sick. “It’s temporary,” he said to himself, “it’s only temporary.”

Player sprawled on hard stone, suffering from a serious case of deja vu. He got to his hands and knees, “What did I do to deserve that?!” he, but got no reply. Herobrine, true to his word, had not followed him.

“Oh, fantastic,” he got to his feet, rubbing the leather chestplate. All around him, stars twinkled in the distance. He was floating in a void of stars. Before him strange white stone floated, suspended in the void. Obsidian pillars rose from it, topped by metal cages and purple luminescence.

Player jumped from the obsidian platform to the white stone. He thought he felt the whole island shift believe him as he landed. An Enderman appeared on the other side of the island and burbled at him, like it was telling him off.

“Sorry!” Player called to it, and then he said, “is this where you come from?”

Another Enderman appeared, closer this time, and scolded him loudly.

Player wasn’t sure what to make of it. They weren’t attacking him. He stared deliberately at the one nearest him, making eye contact. The mob growled, but it didn’t launch itself at him. Player decided not to test his luck. He looked away, but there was another Enderman there, and then another. They looked at him for a moment, then moved away. It looked to Player like they were balancing out the weight on the island.

“Okay,” he said to himself. Did he have to find something here? It seemed likely. The book had said nothing about what to do once he was here. He pressed a hand to one of the obsidian pillars. Perhaps he needed to break into the center of one of these. The goal might be at the center. They were topped with those luminescent purple things, after all.

All the Endermen appeared on the opposite side of the island, gravitating as far from Player as they could get. He heard their burbling recede, and looked up.

Something landed on the pillar beside him, huge and heavy. Player looked up.

The head of the beast alone was three times his size. The scales stood out in ridged rows around its nose and mouth and bristled along its neck. The slit-pupiled violet eyes were each as large as Player’s palm.

“Oh my god,” Player murmured, the first time that word had passed his lips in a long time, but he thought it was justified.

The dragon breathed out a gust of cold air, blowing his hair back from his face.

“What are you?” Player asked.

The dragon’s voice screeched into his mind, like the sound of madness itself, “I am Ender,” it said

Player found himself picturing the screaming crowd again, but the image was almost immediately overwhelmed by other thoughts, the main one being confusion. He had never met a mob that could talk before.

“Have you come to challenge me, little one?” Ender asked. He set one massive claw on the ground, moving down off of the obsidian.

“Ch-challenge you?” Player backed away as the serpentine body slithered down onto the ground. “Is that what I have to do?”

“Don’t you know, little one?” The mouth opened. Ender’s tongue was purple and his teeth gleamed white against the blackness of his throat. “To win the game, you must beat the dragon.”

Player saw a light growing on the back of the dragon’s mouth. He flung himself to the side as a violet ball shot out of its maw and spattered the ground he had just been standing on. It hissed and acrid smoke rose from the stone where it landed.

“I don’t want to fight!” Player called.

The dragon laughed low in its throat, “Don’t worry. I’m like you: I won’t die!” It leapt upward into the air, making the whole island rock side to side as it did so.

Player ducked to avoid the barbed tail as it whipped past. He gazed up at the dragon, mesmerized by its great length. Its wings blew hurricane winds, threatening to knock him off his feet. Herobrine had said he would know what to do, and Player did.

Ender landed again, on the tallest of the obsidian spires. He spread his wings to their maximum size and roared, shaking the ground and making the air vibrate.

“He is beautiful,” thought Player, “and he’s going to kill me, but he is beautiful.”

He ran for cover as another purple blob spattered the ground where he had just been. Ender’s aim was impeccable.

Player leaned out from behind his own obsidian pillar and aimed at the dragon. He compensated for drag, for hang time, the imperfect path of the arrow, and then he let the projectile fly. It landed at the joint where Ender’s wing met his shoulder, and the beast roared in pain, but a moment later it was laughing, and the splintered remains of the arrow dropped from its scales. The glowing object on the tower beneath it had brightened and the light now outlined the black scales of the dragon. It was healing him.

“Oh no,” Player said. That complicated things. He wasn’t quite fast enough to escape the next attack, and white cold pain stung his leg as he ducked back into cover. If he got hit head-on by one of those blasts he would become a popsicle. After that, the heat of The Nether might be welcome.

First thing was first, he needed to destroy the healing totems on the pillars. Some of them he could reach with the bow, others he was going to have to climb to. He suddenly understood why Herobrine had insisted he enchant the pickaxe with efficiency upgrades. He might be able to dig into the center of the pillars and gain some protection from Ender’s attacks.

Player heard the beat of wings overhead and wasted no time in opening up the pillar. He crawled into the interior of it, trying to ignore the slick oily texture of the obsidian on his skin.

Ender roared right right outside his hole. Player heard a rasping noise as the dragon’s mouth opened. He replaced the obsidian block directly behind him, plunging himself into darkness. Something hit the outside of the pillar, spattering.

“Clever,” Ender said, “but you can’t stay in there forever.

Player lit a torch, “Too tight,” he said, bracing a hand over his head against the obsidian over him. He raised the pickaxe, contorting in the confined space, and managed to break the block directly overhead. He stood up and placed the torch, and then began making himself a staircase on the interior of the pillar.

Outside, he could head Ender tracking his movements, the serpentine body wrapping around and around the obsidian pillar as the beast climbed. Finally there was only a single block between them overhead.

“Come out, player!” the dragon taunted, and to Player it sounded like it was enjoying itself immensely.

He pressed up on the obsidian over his head. It wasn’t going to give way even beneath the dragon. He sait down and stayed quiet, hoping that Ender would lose interest. This hadn’t been such a good idea after all. He was trapped.

At last Ender moved, climbing down to the ground, and he seized his chance. The obsidian broke much quicker under his enchanted pick, and he squirmed out of the opening. Before him, a block levitated in the air. It looked like two intersecting cubes, but the solid bars of them were passing through each other as they rotated. Player stared at it. It was definitely what was healing Ender.

He picked up his pickaxe and tapped it against the spinning object. One of the spinning bars hit it and splintered. The cubes stopped rotating, the light inside intensified, and the crystal exploded outwards. If Player’s lower body hadn’t been down inside the pillar still, he would have been thrown over the edge. As it was, he fell back down several blocks of obsidian.

“Ow!” he exclaimed.

The dragon landed on the top of the pillar and put its eye to the stairwell, “Come out of there, little one.”

Player moved farther down the stairs, bracing himself in place.

Ender extended one huge clawed foot into the gap above Player.

“I wish I had real armor,” Player said. The claws came for him, screeching against the obsidian. They would tear right through the flimsy leather armor.

Player lunged over the claws and pulled himself over Ender’s clawed foot. The leg attached to it was like a tree trunk, but the scales made passable handholds.

The dragon pulled its leg out of the hole and gave player a long stare.

“That’s never happened before,” the voice said. 

Player pulled himself up, using the scales as handholds. It didn’t seem like it was hurting Ender, but Player did not really want to hurt the dragon, not yet.

The dragon growled. His mouth opened and neck curved down and around. Player saw it coming. He kicked behind him, hitting the dragon in the snout. It could not have hurt much, but the mouth closed and Ender jerked his head back in surprise.

Player reached the dragon’s shoulder. He managed to seat himself across the dragon’s powerful shoulders.

Ender tried to reach him again, stamping on the obsidian and flapping his wings. The jaws came for him again, but the dragon’s scales did not allow enough mobility.

“Quit that!” Player said, smacking the scales in front of him. He gripped the dragon with his knees and drew his bow off his back.

Ender climbed backwards off the obsidian, onto the ground. He thrashed his tail back and forth. A roar tore from him, and his head whipped back and forth.

Player yelled. He dared not put his arms around the dragon’s neck and stabilize himself like the sharp edges of the scales. Instead he pulled the iron sword from his inventory. He thrust it downward into Ender’s neck. The dragon screamed in pain, the pitch of its roar rising to a head-ringing shriek.

“Sorry,” Player said, driving the blade in deeper, “but you’ll agree it’s fair!”

Ender leaped upwards, his wings spreading wide. Player felt the muscles beneath him flex and move, and then the wings of the dragon beat and he was reduced to clinging to the sword in front of him in order to stay in place.

Player forced his eyes open. There was nothing below him but empty space, empty space all the way until the world ceased to exist, where no distant stars glimmered back at him. Ender was trying to throw him off his back, rolling over and over in the air. His wings folded in close to his body and he dived.

Player screamed as they dropped. His eyes squeezed shut, but when Ender levelled out they opened again. The dragon had carried him below the island. The white stone loomed above him in the starry blackness, at least twenty endermen peering over the edge at him.

Ender roared again, he rolled in the air and Player’s world revolved. Blackness, stars, and stone, flashed past in dizzying patterns. His stomach did flips inside him, and the fear began to be replaced by exaltation. He found himself laughing.

Ender’s head twisted around and he looked at Player through one huge violet eye. “You think this is funny?”

Player couldn’t reply with the wind stealing his breath. He grabbed the sword with both hands and pulled as Ender levelled out. The metal blade slid out of the dragon without too much effort, and the beast stopped roaring in pain.

“Sorry about that,” Player said to Ender.

“I exist to be defeated,” Ender said, “or to defeat!”

“In that case,” Player raised the bow still in his hand and aimed it directly at the dragon’s eye.

Ender turned away quickly, and instead he directed the arrow toward one of the healing crystals. It hit home and the crystal exploded in a puff of smoke. The dragon made a noise like it was impressed. Player made three more shots, each one finding its target. Then the dragon twisted in the air and he had to stop in order to concentrate on staying seated.

Player grabbed on as his legs started to slip and the insides of his arms were opened by the sharp edges of the scales. The blood slicked the scales, but he managed to hold on. 

The dragon stopped swinging around again, and he straightened up and continued shooting. Three more arrows flew. That left only four crystals, two of them encased in metal cages.

“Almost done,” Player said between his teeth. He nocked another arrow and pulled back.

Just then they swept by the obsidian platform he had arrived on, and Player saw a little blue dot far below. He paused, head turning to look at it, “Brine?”

Ender rolled beneath him, and this time Player slipped. He was falling head first toward the white stone. He dropped the bow in shock and the arrow shot off into the void. Player screamed, and then his instincts kicked in and he flipped over in the air and got his feet under him. He used to be able to drop great heights without even a bruise, but it had been more than a year since he had practiced that skill. As long as he didn’t land on his head, would probably survive.

Player bent his knees before he his the ground, and when his toes made contact he forced himself into a roll. The momentum translated into horizontal motion and he went sprawling over the white stone, leaving a slick of blood behind him. He fell off a ledge and down onto a lower expanse of white stone, and this time he wasn’t in a position to soften his fall. The breath left his lungs as he landed, but a few seconds later he breathed in and used his first gasp of air to make a sound of pain.

He had twisted his ankle when he fell, he decided, but the leather leggings had provided enough support to prevent further damage. He got to his hands and knees. His hands were bloody. He wiped them on his shirt as he got to his feet.

Ender leaned over the ledge and put his head right up close to Player. He had left a slick of blood across his neck, and it stood out sharply against the black scales.

“An interesting strategy,” he remarked, “but ultimately not effective.”

“I got most of them,” Player said, getting to his feet. He took the iron sword from where he had put it in his inventory and used it to push himself to his feet. His knees shook beneath him.

“Most,” Ender agreed. His mouth opened and that glow started in the back of his throat.

Player screamed as he lunged forward. He Jammed the sword upward into the dragon’s mouth, and Ender withdrew his head with a scream of his own.

Player scrambled back up the ledge, doing his best to keep the weight off his bad ankle. His bow was laying not too far away.

Ender was high up on one of the remaining obsidian towers, holding his head over the healing device.

It obviously wasn’t doing a very good job.

“Okay,” Player said as he picked up the weapon, “I think I’ve done enough.” He aimed the bow at Ender and released an arrow. It struck the dragon and sunk into its flank.

Ender fixed him in his sights. He opened his mouth and the projectile shot out.

Player aimed carefully in the split second he had and hit it in mid air. Instead of exploding on the spot it shot back toward Ender.

The dragon panicked, leaping up off the pillar. The purple projectile hit the crystal and destroyed it.

Player grinned even as the dragon turned its attention to him. He had the upper hand in the fight and he knew it. Even if Ender retreated to heal, he would take out the crystals slowly.

The dragon too had come to this conclusion. “Let’s end this, shall we?” it said, “before our spectator gets impatient and interrupts.”

Player nodded. He squared his shoulders and hips and forced himself to spread his weight evenly between his injured and uninjured leg.

Ender leapt into the air and spread his wings he circled high overhead, forcing Player to turn in circles to keep him in sight. There was more blood on the dragon now, but it was running from his own mouth. Flecks of it flew in the air. The healing beam had not been able to close the wound on the inside of Ender’s mouth.

Player shuffled on the spot, wincing each time his injured leg took the weight. The dragon circled twice, slowly, and then it dived for Player, mouth open and about fire one of those purple balls. But it couldn’t get its airway clear of blood. In the second before Ender switched to a purely physical attack, Player seized his chance.

He let the arrow that had been resting in his bow go. It landed where he had intended, but only because the dragon flinched upwards. If Ender had remained still, the arrow would have passed harmlessly over his head. As it was, the arrow pierced one of his great violet eyes.

His wings crumpled and Ender tipped forward in the air. Player just had time to curl into a ball before he was taken off his feet by the huge body. Ender was at least a hundred times as large as he was. It was like getting hit by a train, even if the scales were a lot softer than steel. The air left him again, and Player knew his ribs were broken. All of them. His whole ribcage was shattered. He could not breathe for a long time, and then he inhaled instinctively. The pain shredded his chest and stomach, ripped into him like nothing he had ever felt before. He screamed that air out again, and the next breath he drew was tiny and shallow.

Ender wasn’t in any better shape. His enormous body was curled around Player, and the human could feel the huge lungs working, drawing sharp shallow breaths.

“Finish it,” Ender said after what felt like hours.

Player managed one word, “Can’t.”

“A fine predicament,” the dragon made a sound that might have been a laugh, “we can both be thankful someone else is here.”

Player closed his eyes. It felt like he was spinning inside his head. “Crushed,” he thought, “of all the ways I thought I might die in this fight, I didn’t think of crushed.”

Footsteps came across the stone, familiar soft footsteps. Without speaking, Herobrine crouched down and put something to Player’s lips.

“Drink,” he said simply.

Player complied as best he could, taking small sips of the healing mixture. He was careful not to cough until he felt the potion take hold, and his ribs began to knit back together.

“Never tell anyone I did that,” Herobrine told him when Player took the bottle from him and held it himself.

Player nodded.

“What would you do without me?” Herobrine asked.

“Die,” Player said, “just like everyone else.” He opened his eyes and saw Herobrine crouched down next to him. “I thought you weren’t coming after me.”

“I forgot to tell you something.”

“So tell me,” he got to his feet, feeling much better, though there were still sore spots on his ribs.

“Not yet,” Herobrine looked at the dragon before them. “It’s not done yet.”

Player looked at Ender’s body. From this angle, he couldn’t see the arrow in the dragon’s eye. The beast might have been sleeping. 

“I…” Player stuttered a little, and then he said, “I don’t want to.”

“Stevie,” Herobrine scolded him, sounding genuinely annoyed, “do you want to beat the game or not?”

“I do,” Player said, “but he’s so…”

“Sometimes,” Herobrine said, “we have to kill beautiful things because on the inside they are rotten.”

Player looked at him, back at Ender.

“Kill her,” Herobrine said flatly.

Player’s eyes widened, “Her?!”

The dragon laughed again. It sounded painful. “Better do as Guardian says or I’ll get up and bite you in half.” She heaved the front half of her body off the ground, and her neck twisted around. The bloody well of her right eye had an arrow protruding from it.

Player felt Herobrine move away from him. He looked up into the face of the dragon, and for one dizzying moment it wasn’t Ender looking back, but a sallow face framed by loose greasy hair, twisted in disgust and hatred. “Mother?” he said.

Then the dragon was back, its mouth stretching wide, the razor sharp teeth coated with blood and the blackness of its gullet.

“I’m going to swallow you whole,” Ender said.

Player fumbled in his inventory, pulled out the iron sword. He held it in shaking hands, raised it before him as he had been taught.

The dragon’s head snapped forward, faster than a lunging snake, and Player did the same thing he had done before; he shoved the sword upwards into the roof of her mouth. Ender pulled back with a howl of refreshed agony, almost taking the sword out of Player’s hand as she did. 

This time he didn’t retreat. He pressed forward, bringing the sword up again as the dragon thrashed in pain, wings beating uselessly against the white stone. Player put a foot on her nose and stepped up onto the great head. He crouched down to look into the one remaining violet eye.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I really am.”

She only groaned low in its throat.

Player stood and raised the sword over his head. He plunged it downwards as hard as he could. It penetrated the dragon’s skull with a crack as loud as a gunshot. Player stood there holding the sword for a long moment.

“Congratulations,” Ender said, her voice screeching against his own head.

Player was enveloped in a cloud of white snow, the flakes falling gently around him. He fell from his perch on the dragon’s nonexistent head to the ground with an “oof.” The snowflakes drifted to the ground all around him, catching in his hair and eyelashes. He didn’t see any of it clearly. There were tears in his eyes.

Herobrine walked up to him, “Mother,” he said.

Player looked up at him, then got to his feet slowly. “What?” he asked, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Mother. That’s your name for the dragon.”

“Her name was Ender.”

Herobrine smiled, “‘Ender’ is like ‘Player.’ Everyone who meets the dragon names her for themself, and your name for her is ‘Mother.’”

Player shrugged. He looked at Herobrine again. Then he raised the hand that wasn’t clutching the sword still and smacked the man sharply across the face. “Warn me!” he snapped, “‘Don’t worry, Stevie, it’ll be fine!’ Right, Herobrine, because a dragon is no big deal!”

Herobrine blinked at him, stunned, and then his face cracked into a smile. It was an honest smile. He swept Player into a hug, and no matter how much the human squirmed he could not wiggle free. After a few seconds he returned the embrace, annoyance clearing as relief flooded him.

“I’m sorry,” Herobrine said, “it works better when you’re surprised.”

“Tell that to my ribs,” Player snapped back, but his voice had lost what bite it had.

Herobrine let him go. He waved away the few snowflakes still in the air and gestured to the thing that had formed behind them. “You ready to see your reward?”

Player stared at the bedrock well, topped by the black and purple dragon egg. “She told the truth,” he said, “she respawns.”

“Of course she does. You can’t really kill a thing like her forever.”

“Brine,” Player said, “what’s your name for her?”

A pause. “She has a few,” Herobrine admitted, “Loneliness was the first one.”

Player kissed his cheek before he walked to the edge of the well. He looked down into it. The stars shone back at him from a great distance away.

“I step into this and I beat the game?” he asked.

Herobrine didn’t answer the question. He said, “I have to tell you what I forgot.”

Player turned, and the man joined him at the edge of the bedrock.

Herobrine took his hands, tossing the iron sword aside as he did so. He looked at Player, into his eyes. “I love you,” he said.

Player’s stomach did flips like he was riding a dragon. He opened his mouth to respond, but Herobrine dropped one of his hands and put it over his lips.

“Don’t say anything,” Herobrine said, “if you do I won’t be able to do what needs to be done.”

Player nodded, and Herobrine lowered his hand.

“Whatever happens,” Herobrine said, “I want you to remember what I just told you, okay?”

Another nod.

“And,” a predatory smile touched his mouth, “I have a way to follow you, so don’t worry about me.”

Player looked at the portal. Herobrine could step through it too. That was obvious. He nodded again.

“I have to get the rest of them to beat the game too,” Herobrine said.

“Everyone?!” Player exclaimed before he could stop himself, but Herobrine didn’t scold him.

“Everyone,” Herobrine said, “and it will take me a while, but not forever. I promise you that. Wait for me.”

“Of course,” Player said, and then he laughed, “I waited years in that compound, I can wait years more for you if I have to.”

Herobrine’s face eased. “Thank you,” He said, “thank you.”

“Can I have a kiss before I jump in that thing?”

Herobrine kissed him like it was the first time. He wrapped his arms around Player and held him close, ignoring the blood and dust all over the human. It lasted long, impossibly brief seconds, both of their hearts pounding and butterflies fluttering inside them. When finally they broke apart, Player knew that this was goodbye. He did not say so, but he decided he needed to make some kind of gesture.

“Here,” he took the diamond pickaxe off his back, “you should take this.”

Herobrine took it from him, “I’ll find a use for it,” he said.

Player stepped up on the bedrock around the pool of stars. He looked back at Herobrine, still holding one of his hands. The look of pain on his face almost turned Player back, but he could see that it was a clean decided pain. Herobrine wanted him to do this even if it hurt him.

“I love you too,” Player told him. He just had time to see Herobrine’s face break into the widest grin he had ever seen on it before he stepped into the portal of stars.

Herobrine lunged forward in an attempt to catch him, but he was too late. Player vanished, leaving only a ripple in the stars behind him.

He let himself crumple down to the ground, head on the bedrock. His shoulders shook, and a sob ripped from him, the first real sob he had let escape in a long time.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said to the stars, “I’m going to miss you.”

The egg atop the well cracked, and the shell shot out in many directions at once. The tiny dragon curled its tail over its forepaws like a cat.

“He’s something,” Ender said.

“Shut up,” Herobrine snarled.

She leaped down beside him, her tail trailing in the stars, and forced her scaly body beneath his chin. Herobrine ran his hand over her back.

“Well, Guardian, are you going to bring more players for me to fight?”

“It’s the only way to get them out,” Herobrine said.

“So you say,” she rubbed her neck along his face.

“Go ahead and eat,” Herobrine said, “I’m okay.”

“Of course you are,” Ender said, “you cannot be anything else.” Her neck curved and her tongue lapped at the surface of portal. The stars filled her belly, making her whole body swell.

Herobrine sat on the bedrock beside her as she consumed the portal. He was not concerned with escaping The End. It could be done in other ways.

It was almost fifteen minutes later when the message appeared. It flickered in the center of his vision. Herobrine read it twice, and then he started laughing. He laughed so hard he fell off the bedrock and onto the endstone, his arms clutching his stomach.

Ender looked on, concerned. He sounded like he was in pain.

“I didn’t think he was…” he said, “I didn’t think it was really him!”

Ender got the joke now, “Ah, you didn’t know he was the one.”

Herobrine nodded as tears of bitter laughter filled his eyes.

Across the world and dimensions, all the players saw it. They all realized at once what it meant, even if they had never heard of the person it indicated before.

Clarence, sitting in the dappled sunlight beneath an oak tree with the book open across his knees, read the message silently three or four times before he finally said, “Steve White has earned the achievement The End. Steve White has disconnected.” Reading it aloud did not help. “Who’s Steve White?”


	62. The End or Memory Lane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major Spoilers in this chapter for the end of Minecraft, as it contains fragments of the "End Poem" by Julian Gough. If you haven't beaten Minecraft already (and why would you wait so long?) and/or read the poem before, I highly recommend you do it before reading the first section of this chapter.
> 
> If you want to skip the spoilers but still read the story, there's a scene change about halfway through at the horizontal line. Just skip to that part.

Player found himself falling out of the world, in a void without stars. He started to panic, but then the blackness faded and instead he was floating in warm dirt, like he was a seed beneath the ground. That was what it felt like; he was growing.

Then the words started, soft at first, just whispers.

“I see the player you mean,” one said to him, the gentle whisper of wind in leaves.

“Steve White?” the other replied, this one the bubbling of a stream.

Player found himself unable to open his mouth to reply. He was a seed in the ground, and he was growing, and suddenly he knew that he was Steve White, that the name was his.

“Yes, take care. It has reached a higher level. It can read our thoughts.”

“I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.”

“It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.”  
“That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.”

“I’m dreaming?” Player thought. It felt like he was dreaming here in this place without a body where he was only a mind buried in the soft warm ground, eavesdropping on this conversation between Gods because that must be what they were.  
“Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.”  
“They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.”  
“What did this player dream?”  
“This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.”

Player sat there and listened to them, and as he listened the voices changed. They were the leaves in the wind, water over stones, the sound of his own heartbeat, the screaming of the crowd, and Herobrine’s breathing against his skin. He had been listening to them his whole life, he realized.

Other older memories came to him then. The sound of the twins crying, his sister’s slow voice, the sound of his father’s car starting up in the driveway. All these things were the voices, and yet the voices were none of them.

“Does it know that we love it?” The water asked.

“Sometimes it hears the universe, yes.” Replied the leaves.

And they told them the story of misery, of a boy trapped in his mind, hearing and seeing only what he had made in himself and mistaking it for reality. And Player, who was Steve White, began to understand.

“I will tell the player a story,” the water said then, “a story that contains the truth.” Restless water, Player thought, impatient and passionate.

“Give it a body again,” prompted the leaves

“Yes. Player…”

“Use it’s name.”

“Steve White. Player of games.”

“Good.”

“Take a breath now,” and Player did, then another. He felt the air fill his chest, felt his lungs expand and contract as he never had before. “Let your limbs return. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream.” the water said, and Player could feel his fingers and toes. He wiggled them in the void, but still he could not see his body.

And then the story started, and it was his story, and his alone. The story of a body and a mind collected out of stardust and spun into muscles and tendons, a person made of nothing but love, awaking into the long dream, the long game. Alive and breathing.

And as the story was told, Player did not see the earth around him any longer. He saw instead himself, the story he had left behind. It was so much larger than himself, the universe reaching through him, touching every other living thing. It was just as the voices said. He was the player made from stardust. He was alive.

“And the universe said I love you,” the voices whispered to him, just as they had whispered to every other player to ever step through that portal.

“And the universe said you are not alone.”

“And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing.”

“And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code.”

“And the universe said I love you because you are love.”

And Player thought of Herobrine and, for some reason, the man he knew only as Jack. That promise, “you will always have a place with Us.”

“And the game was over and the player woke from the dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love. You are the player, Steve White.”

“Wake up.”

* * *

No one was ever able to explain to themselves what happened to Caroline White. She was a normal child, perhaps not the brightest, but not the dullest either. Her teenage years were average, her college career appeared unremarkable in all respects.

No. No one knew exactly what happened. No one could pinpoint exactly when it happened either, but one day the calls to her mother stopped, she moved halfway across the country, and three weeks later she was married. No one from her family was invited to the wedding.

When they eventually found out where Caroline had gone, her parents assumed the husband was to blame, but they would not have been totally surprised to find out that he was not. When eventually they spoke to their daughter, it was apparent what had happened, if not why or when or how. By then her first child had been born, a baby boy with strange blue-violet eyes.

Her mother, when she saw Caroline on television for the first time, could only stare at the child held in the crook of her daughter’s elbow. In her other hand, her daughter held a sign painted with rainbow stripes. Over the background, words were painted in white. “God hates fags.”

It would be a lie to say that Steve White had a happy childhood. It edged towards tolerable until he was ten years old. He had a younger sister three years his junior, and then fraternal twins almost nine years younger than he was, and they ate up most of his parents’ time. His mother satisfied the legal requirements of having a child by sending him to a private school she deemed acceptable. It was expensive, by Arthur White had a good job and Caroline could scrape up some money doing odd jobs and babysitting for other members of her church. The school was everything she wanted, apart from the fact that it was an actual school. She had wanted to homeschool the children. Arthur had put his foot down.

It was entirely probable that Steve White would have grown up to be exactly what his mother wanted him to be. He would have married a girl from the church, had children, and lived every day in confused regret, which would have been drowned in bible verses and eventually alcohol until either his will gave out or his liver did. It would have turned out that way, had it not been for the events triggered when his father left.

Before he walked out of that house for the last time, Arthur White told his son that he just could not stand his wife any longer. She refused to sign divorce papers, and he did not have the money after tuition, food, and rent for his own house to hire a lawyer to sue her, so he was simply moving out of the house. He told his son he loved him, made him promise to look after his brother and sisters, and left.

It became obvious to Steve immediately that his father had been curbing some of his mother’s anger. If he brought home a bad grade, he went to bed without dinner. If he stained his best shirt, she screamed at him. If his brother or sister cried when his mother was taking a nap and he could not make them be quiet, it would sometimes escalate to a beating. He did not tell anyone. He couldn’t. He didn’t have any friends to confide in, the teachers at the private school did not care about his home life, and even though his father still provided financial support, he was long gone by then. Even then it might have turned out differently, but his mother sent him to camp. It wasn’t a special camp because for all her preaching, all her high-and-mighty talk, all the talk of the minister at church proclaiming them to be devil spawn, she did not know her son was homosexual. He didn’t know himself. His siblings were the whole world to him. He had never had the time between caring for them and keeping his mother at bay to explore the romantic side of his personality.

He did not want to go, but when mother said to do something, you shut up and did it or risked having to wear long sleeve shirts for two weeks. There was no argument you could make against it. Technically, you were supposed to kill disobedient children. Stone them to death.

So he got on the bus, buttoned into a starched shirt, pale skin giving no contrast against the white of it. The bus had no air conditioning, and within fifteen minutes the shirt had wilted. The ride was about an hour into the city, he thought. He was supposed to get off on 31st street, but he wasn’t paying attention. The sun was warm and he was drowsy. He’d been awake the whole night before worrying about how his little sister would handle being alone with their mother for a whole week. He had given her a list of rules to follow, but she was only nine and he had always thought she was a little dim. It might end poorly.

He nodded off for a few minutes on the bus and when he awoke the first thing he registered was the number one on the stop number.

Steve leapt up and pushed the stop button. He grabbed his bag and got off the bus. The driver didn’t so much as look at him as he got off the bus. He had not made a positive impression on them.

On the sidewalk he rubbed his eyes, scrubbing the sleep out of them. His eyes were threatening to close on him. The bus pulled away behind him, and Steve looked up at the road sign. He was on 11th street.

“No,” he said softly, “oh no, no no!” He spun around, but the bus was long gone, and he could not wait here for the next one. He looked nervously around the neighborhood he was in. It was nothing like the sheltered little suburb he lived in. The sides of the builds were covered in spray paint, the windows at ground level were boarded up with plywood and the ones on the upper levels had swamp coolers jammed into them.

Panic jabbed at him. He looked left and right, then started walking in the direction the bus had gone, hoping that he would see 12th street. It wasn’t. It was Roosevelt Drive. He backtracked and went the other way. It was Orange Street. He was lost.

Steve tried to think reasonably. He didn’t think he had been asleep long, but he could not remember any other street names to indicate whether or not he had seen any more numbers. Not knowing what else to do, he started walking.

It didn’t take long for them to find him. Three of them came out down the street toward him. They were not much older than he was. Maybe 15 or 16, but they were bigger and their adolescence was beginning to translate itself into adult muscle.

“What’re you doing here?” One of them asked.

“Somebody wandered into the wrong part of town,” Another said when Steve didn’t respond. He had shut down at the first sign of trouble. Best to hold his tongue at let it pass him by.

“What kind of shirt is that?” the third asked, grabbing the collar of his shirt. When they still got no response, the leader of the group jumped ahead.

“Go through his bag,” he said, “take what we can.”

Steve clutched his duffel bag more tightly to his chest. There was nothing in it he would not part from, but he did not want these three to go through his stuff. Two of them grabbed his arms and tried to pry them apart, and the third took lifted the strap of his bag over his head and tried to pull it away from him.

Steve did not start screaming. That instinct had been removed from him long ago. He stood there rigidly and tried to hold onto the bag with all his strength. He knew he could not resist all of them. 

Just when he was starting to lose his grip a voice said, “What do you three think you’re doing?”

All three of the teenagers backed off fast. Behind them was another man. He was older, maybe 23. He had black hair cropped short in a military-style buzz cut, but the rest of his clothing made it obvious he wasn’t with the armed forces.

“It’s broad daylight for God’s sake!” the newcomer said, “what have we told you about doing this during the day.”

There was general shuffling and mumbling. One of the boys said finally, “We’re not supposed to mug anyone during the day.”

“I don’t care what you do otherwise, but get picked up by the cops and I will make sure you get punished. Not get out of here. Leave the kid alone.”

All three of them skulked away down the street. When they had turned the corner, the man walked to Steve, still clutching his bag to his chest.

“I’m sorry about that, kiddo. Are you lost?”

Steve nodded, not looking up.

“Where are you supposed to be?”

He told him the name of the camp he was going to.

“A little Christian then.” The man noted. He crouched down to look at Steve’s face, “How good are you at math?”

Steve blinked, “What?”

“My kid brother is stuck in summer school cause he can’t get algebra through his thick skull. I don’t think you really want to go to that camp. If you want, I can take you to my house and you can hang out with him until we can call your parents and get this straightened out.”

Steve blinked at him. He had never had someone offer him this kind of thing before. He had never even been to a friend’s house overnight.

“Or,” the man said, “I can drive you there and you can go to camp like you planned.” He must have seen the absolute dread on the boy’s face because he went on, “One or the other kid. I can’t let you wander around here and you’re not going to be able to find a taxi around here.”

“I’ll go with you,” Steve said in a rush. Anything to stay away from camp.

He was lead to a multi-story building built over what Steve thought of as a club. The whole bottom floor was smokey and stank of waste and vomit. The man took him three floors up and opened the door to a small apartment.

“Adam!” He bellowed at the top of his voice.

A boy Steve’s age appeared around a door. “What?!” he yelled back, just as loudly.

“I found a tutor for you.”

Adam scowled. He looked at Steve, “Someone try to mug him?”

His older brother only sighed.

Adam walked over. He was all slouching attitude, but Steve immediately sensed something else in him, something tender and understanding. It was a peculiar energy he had never come across before.

“Nice to meet you,” Adam said, “I’m Adam. You’re here to help me understand why there are letters in my equations.”

“They’re just placeholders,” Steve said.

Adam’s eyebrows shot up, an expression he was clearly copying from his brother. He looked thoughtful for a minute, and then he shook his head, “Thought I had it for a second there.”

The older boy gave Steve a pat on the shoulder, making him jump. He hadn’t been touched like that since his father had gone. “Don’t break anything,” he said to Adam, “I’ve got stuff to do.” He left the apartment.

Adam turned out to be nothing at all like his surroundings suggested he would be. He was friendly and easy-going, and explained to Steve right away that he was stuck in the house until he finished summer school, which he obviously resented, but that was how it was. When he had finished telling Steve this and he had still not heard a word from him, Adam looked at the boy sitting across from him. “Are you hungry?” he asked in an entirely different voice.

Steve was starving, but he didn’t want to say so. He shook his head.

“How’d you end up here anyway?” Adam asked.

Steve told him the story in short sentences.

“You don’t want to go to camp?” he sounded taken aback, “but you get to go swimming and have campfires and build castles in the woods--”

“Not that kind of camp,” Steve cut across him, more sharply than he had meant to, “I’m going to spend a week reading the bible and talking about it, or working in soup kitchens. Maybe they’d have us make a diorama or something.”

Adam laughed, “No one does dioramas anymore!”

“My school does.”

“What school is that?”

Steve told him.

Adam winced, “Don’t they use corporal punishment there?”

Steve nodded, “I’ve never been hit, but other kids have.”

Adam looked at him differently, narrowing his eyes like Steve was something interesting on a microscope slide. “You know, more than a few times we’ve had missionaries at our door here, going on about how Jesus will save us from ourselves and we must repent for our sins.”

Steve winced.

“You don’t act like them at all.”

“I’m not from that kind of church.”

“What kind then?”

Steve pulled out his tablet, an old thing but still functional and it could access the internet, and showed him a couple videos.

“That’s my mom,” Steve pointed her out in the front row, “I’m not in any of these.”

Adam looked at the tiny hard-faced woman screaming at passersby in the video, then back at Steve, then back down. He was struggling to understand it. How had that given birth to this? It made no sense. 

“My dad never let her take me with her,” Steve said, “he said he didn’t want any of us to have that forced on us. He always made a big deal out of us not blindly following either of their ideologies.”

Adam made no reply.

“I can understand why he left,” Steve said, “I don’t get why he didn’t take me with him.”

There was silence for a long time, and finally Adam said, “I’m going to make us something for lunch.”

Steve watched him walk out of the room. He stayed at the table, watching the people on the screen screaming.

When the boy put a sandwich down on top of the tablet he jumped.

“Will they call your mom when you don’t show up?” Adam asked, taking a bite of his own food.

Steve shook his head.

“Why not?”

“No one in my family has phones.”

That earned him a confused stare. “Your whole family is crazy,” Adam decided.

Steve started eating, trying not to gulp the food down. He had a feeling this family was worse off than his was by a long way. Actually, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he had even been registered in advance for the camp. He had a check and a form in his duffle bag. If he did not show up, no one would care. “Would you brother let me stay here?” he asked, “for a couple days?”

“Probably,” Adam said, “he’s got to put on a good show for J.S. this week and he likes you. If you can teach me algebra, he’d probably adopt you if you asked.”

“Who’s J.S.?”

Adam smiled, “Everyone calls him Jack Shit. J.S. He’s just some guy who comes around every couple years, but whenever he’s here everyone’s on their best behavior.”

“Why call him that?”

A shrug, “That’s what he calls himself. He’s more messed up than you are. You’ll probably meet him at some point.”

“Great,” Steve sighed, “I guess I should look at the algebra if I want to hang around, shouldn’t I?”

Adam brought out the sheet of paper he had been working from his bedroom and they spent the afternoon first on math and then, when Adam was too frustrated to continue, playing games on Steve’s tablet. It was the first time in a long time that he had spent time with a friend simply for fun.

It was not until two days later that he met J.S. He was dragged out of the apartment by Adam’s older brother and brought all the way down to the ground floor. It was night, and that meant that the ground floor was in use. It was filled with people either sitting in corners holding drinks or in the middle of the floor talking. There was no music. It was not a club. Steve did not know what it was.

Down another set of stairs, into a basement lit dimly with naked lightbulbs on the ceiling. 

To the 12 year old boy, the man called J.S. was a giant. He had to be over seven feet tall. He was slim but not thin. Muscles stood out in his arms even sitting down.

Steve, looking at the man seated in the plain wooden chair like a king about to hold court, was aware of how small and weak he was. 

“Here he is,” the man behind Steve said, leading him forward.

J.S. tilted his head a little as he looked at Steve. His right arm was palm-up on the arm of his chair. A young boy was leaning over it, tightening a belt around the man’s upper arm. Steve met the veiled gaze of the man. He was wearing sunglasses over his eyes even indoors.

The boy picked something up from a site table. He raised a syringe to the light, flicked it, depressed the plunger slightly, causing liquid to emerge from the needle. He bent close to J.S.’s arm and positioned the needle, but just then the man said, “Leave off that.”

The boy looked up at him, surprised.

“Go upstairs and find someone who needs it more than I do,” J.S. undid the belt from around his arm and gave it to the boy as well. “You do what we talked about. Keep yourself clean.”

“Yessir,” the boy said. He pushed past Steve, throwing him a jealous sneer as he passed.

“You,” J.S. said to him, “come here.”

Steve went to him, half-entranced by the size of him. He seemed like a mountain.

“I bet,” the man said, “I can guess your name. Can you guess mine?”

“You’re Jack,” Steve said. He almost added the last name, but years of programming wouldn’t allow it.

“That’s right,” the voice was soft now, welcoming and gentle, “and you’re Steve.”

Steve paused. He looked up at at him. Jack’s face was half-hidden, but he could see the edges of scars around his eyes, not quite hidden by the glasses. Even so, he thought it was a nice face; a face that had seen far too much to ever really smile again and still managed it.

“How did you know that?” He asked.

“You look like a Steve,” Jack said. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you. You’re a curiosity. Most kids with your upbringing would run away from a place like this.”

“They feed me here,” Steve said, “without me doing anything, and--”

“You’re not walking on glass all the time,” Jack said. He looked like Steve’s words were breaking his heart. He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. He looked at the man behind Steve, “Give us a minute, would you?”

The door opened and closed.

“When I heard there was a kid hanging around with Adam, I did not expect you,” Jack said.

Steve didn’t know what to say. He just kept looking at the man.

“You have absolutely beautiful eyes,” Jack said, “has anyone ever told you that?”

Steve shook his head, suddenly afraid he was going to start blushing.

“Tell me about your family,” Jack said, standing up from the chair, “and sit down.“

“I’m okay,” he said.

“Sit, Steve. If I’m going to forgo that fix I need to move around.

Steve sat. He spoke haltingly at first, but talking to Jack was like saying a prayer. It felt good. He told him about his mother, his father, his two sisters and brother, going into detail he had spared Adam. When he was done, Jack moved back in front of him.

“I see,” he said simply. There was nothing else really to say. The telling was the important bit, not the diagnosis afterwards. “What do you think of this place?”

“I like it,” Steve said.

“And you are aware, Westboro Baptist offspring that you are, that the family you are staying with is involved with gang activity in this area, and that this house is a hub of narcotic distribution?”

Steve bristled. The Westboro Baptists were long gone, but it wasn’t an incorrect statement, “Yes. Adam told me that.”

“And you’re still not afraid of it?”

“If I understand my readings,” Steve said, “being here actually improves my chances of getting into heaven. As long as I don’t take any of the drugs, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Jack smiled, “That’s a dangerous point of view, but I have to admit I share it. Going to convert the whole gang, are you?”

“No!” Steve said with such force he actually saw the man rock back a little, “I’d never do that.”

“That should tell you all you need to know about the religion your mother has shared with you.”

The boy thought about that. He knew what Jack was getting at. His father had said much the same thing, but sometimes lessons only work when they come from a stranger.

“Yes,” he said, “it does.”

“I’m telling you this in advance because I can’t stay here forever,” Jack knelt before him. He took one of Steve’s hands in his large one, his skin cold to the touch, and made him look into his face. His eyes were still covered, but for a moment Steve entertained the thought that he could make out something behind the glasses. Large, painful looking, outward bulging pools of blackness. He swallowed hard. “There is nothing wrong with you,” Jack told him.

“I know that,” Steve said indignantly.

“You just remember that then,” Jack soothed, “you remember it when you hate yourself, when all you can think about is that lake of fire, you remember what I told you. There will always be a place for you here and with Us.”

Steve was beginning to think this man was a little insane. Maybe the heroine had side effects. Then Jack put something into his open hand. It was a little blue ceramic oval with two pools of blackness cut into it. There was a place to run a chain through to put it on a necklace.

Steve looked at it. “What’s this?”

“A token. Show that at the door in places like this, and most guards will step out of your way.”

He realized then what the man had given him, and he heard Adam’s words: “When J.S. is around everyone is on their best behavior.” If he ever needed to run somewhere, Jack’s influence would shelter him for at least a few hours. It was the greatest gift anyone had given him. “Thank you,” he said, closing his hand over the cool ceramic.

Jack kissed him on the forehead, “Take care of yourself. There are a lot worse things out there than the people you’ll find in this building.”

Steve nodded. He thanked Jack again, said goodbye, and went back upstairs. He was shaking with a peculiar kind of happiness that seemed to stem mostly from blind panic.

Adam was waiting for him, elated. “I got it!” he said, rushing to hug Steve as he came through the door to the apartment, “I understand it!”

“Algebra?” Steve asked.

“It’s like you said: the letters aren’t really letters. I don’t know why it took so long to grasp!” He proudly showed Steve the equations he had solved. They were all correct.

“That’s great,” Steve told him.

“Now I can get out of summer school!” Adam punched the air a couple times for good measure. 

Steve caught himself looking at Adam’s butt while the boy leapt around the kitchen, the first aches of attraction starting in his stomach. What he was feeling never really sank in, or if it did he denied it. What he didn’t deny was the token. He thredded it onto a leather thong and always kept it near him either around his neck or in his pocket. It was a lifeline, a panic button. If he ever needed to run, he could use it.

It was not long into the school year that Steve White suddenly became interested in sports rather than the arts. He made up practices and games to appease his mother, who by that time was so wrapped up in straightening out her younger children she almost ignored her oldest son anyway. 

He became a regular visitor at the apartment building in the slums, and as he became more relaxed there he started to range with Adam and his small group of friends. They were the youngest in the neighborhood, and since Adam’s brother was not exactly a lightweight the older kids mostly stayed away. If ever there was a scuffle, the strange middle-class boy with the token around his neck was always spared the worst of it. It never got very bad anyway. He learned to shut up about what Adam referred to as, “All that Jesus shit,” a term that ticked Steve off a little but he never protested because it might put his position at risk if he did.

He met the rest of the family. Adam’s mother and father lived in a house not too far away from his brother’s apartment. The only reason he had been in that apartment when Steve had first arrived was because they were having a vacation of sorts and wanted him out of the house. The mother was kind and protective, nothing at all like Steve’s mother. The father too was the polar opposite of his: mean and grumpy, constantly with a beer in his hand. Adam steered clear of his father, and Steve followed suit after catching a clout on the ear for crossing in front of the television. It was that kind of family: another kid around the house was welcome as long as that kid behaved well. Steve was good at behaving well, and this definition of what was good and what was bad was much more forgiving than the one he had at home.

Of course, this could not last forever. His own mother began cracking down as he transitioned into high school, forbidding him from sports, making him watch the twins while she went to meetings at the church. During these hours, Steve started to deprogram his younger siblings as best he could. He read passages from the bible with them, but he always chose ones of love and acceptance above all else and avoided certain passages about Hell and eternal suffering. It was not the kind of thing that should be in the heads of kindergarteners. He was not as successful as his father had been with him, but he made some progress, and later in their lives the twins would remember him with the same reverence he had for his father.

Even so, he found time to attend the funeral of Adam’s mother when he was 16. He ended up half-holding the sobbing boy as they lowered her coffin into the earth. The babies, their own set of twins, were still in the hospital. Two girls, beautiful in the way only newborn children can be beautiful. Adam loved them like he loved no one else in the world, and Steve did not have to wonder why. It was not going to be an easy world for them to grow up in.

If he had been forced to choose one single moment where everything went wrong, it would have been that one: when he stepped out of the graveyard still comforting Adam, looked up, and saw his mother in her car looking back.

“Will you come back and stay with me for a while?” Adam asked just then.

Steve looked at him, wiping the fear and surprise off his face with a practiced ease, “Of course,” he said. If he could have seen what his face betrayed right then, he would have understood his mother’s anger. From then on the camps were the special sort, and it was ensured he got there. That was the beginning of the end.


	63. The Beginning

Steve opened his eyes. He half-expected to feel the grass beneath him, the tree behind his back. He even expected, for a moment, to wake in bed with Herobrine, like someone had pressed reset.

But instead he saw, through a distortion of liquid and glass, a white tiled roof and a wall painted a very pale blue. The liquid he was suspended in sloshed over his face as he moved in it. He stretched out his arms and touched the glass on either side of his body, turned his head left and right. On one side of him there was only a wall. The other side looked out on a room. There were two men in the room, chatting with each other, neither looking at him. Steve blinked at them, then turned to look back up at the ceiling.

He tried out his voice. “I,” he said slowly, “am Steve White, made of love and stardust, awaking again in the long dream.”

He reached up to his face, felt the mask over his nose and mouth that supplied him with fresh air. Felt the wires on the back of his neck that must have connected him to the game. As he brushed them with his fingers, they fell away from him and were suspended in the liquid.

It was time to get out of this cell.

Steve reached up with both hands and pushed against the lid. It lifted open with the smallest of pneumatic hisses, multiplied tenfold by the liquid in his ears. He sat up, surprised both by how strong and how weak he was. Weak from the absence of physical food, strong because he was not totally atrophied from being asleep so long.

“A coma,” he thought, “the smoke inhalation maybe, or the blow to the head, or maybe I simply shut down. It was that or go back home and I didn’t want to do that.”

“He’s awake?” said one of the men as Steve pulled the mask from his face. He took a deep breath of the air in the room, felt his equilibrium normalize. His shook his head, throwing semi-congealed droplets of the liquid all over the room.

“He’s awake!”

Suddenly he was being lifted out of the tank. Alarms started blaring as the censors embedded in it lost his vital signs. The men were laughing, hugging him despite the liquid still coating his body. One of them wrapped him in a thin warm blanket and used another to scrub his face dry.

Steve squirmed, then started laughing as they both dried him off. It tickled.

“Okay,” the blond man said. He clicked his fingers in front of Steve’s face, watched him flinch back. “Can you count to ten for me?”

Steve did. The dark-haired one had moved away from him and was rummaging in a drawer.

“Now the alphabet,” the blond man said, also glancing at his companion.

Steve did, in the sing-song way most people do.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.”

“Okay, all that is working. Now, what’s your name?”

Steve stopped. His name. He had been Player for so long, and yet his memories said Steve White. There was a birth certificate somewhere to prove it. It was difficult enough hanging onto his identity as it was, and now he had to choose. Was he Player or Steve?

Then, unbidden, came the memory of the first time Herobrine had slipped into using it. Steve shivered at the memory, the brush of lips against his neck, the name ripping from Herobrine almost painfully.

“Steve,” he said.

“Last name?” The man asked.

“White,” he said, “I guess. I’m going to change it.”

The two men looked at each other.

“I’ll take it,” the dark-haired one said, standing up, “Get some clothes on, kid. We’ve finally got something to show off.”

Steve pulled on the thin hospital shirt and pants. He had been naked before that, but neither of the technicians had seemed to care.

“Who are you two?” He asked when he was dressed.

“Mike,” said the blond one.

“Gabe,” said the dark-haired one.

“Michael and Gabriel,” Steve had to grin.

“Don’t you say it,” Mike said, crossing his arms.

“Couple of guardian angels,” Steve said.

“I told you not to!” Mike scolded. Gabe was laughing. “Okay kiddo,” Mike said, “up you go.”

They both lifted Steve up, as high as their shoulders. He yelped as they did, then started laughing for real. Mike hit the button for the door, but it took a moment to open. When it did, a tinny fanfare sounded from speakers hidden around the hallway.

“It can be done!” Gabe was yelling, “It has been done!”

Steve stopped laughing as they stepped into the hallway. It was a copy of the old compound before the reset. It was an immense circular building. The number beside his room: 4979. The first one they passed was 4980. The room was dark and empty. Then, only a few steps farther along, they passed door 0001, and two faces looking out at them: a man and a woman.

Then Steve saw the boy in the pod. A boy, like him, naked. A little heavy around the waist, twitching in the liquid. He knew him. The two people started jumping up and down like excited children. They burst into the hallway, shouting.

Steve was lifted down and embraced again, patted down like they couldn’t believe he was real. More and more people came from the rooms. They ran down the hallways from either direction. Almost 5,000 players meant at least 10,000 employees all waiting and waiting, anticipating the inevitable, dreading one outcome and hoping for another. Steve was proof that their hope was not unfounded.

Still he didn’t like it. It was too loud and too many people. He tried to push his way out of the crowd, but he was the center of it. His heart was pounding and he was hearing the other crowd chanting instead of this one cheering, and he pressed his hands over his ears. One of the technicians that was trying to speak to him stepped back in confusion. She signalled over his shoulder, and in three seconds Mike was there. He leaned in Steve could speak to him.

“I don’t like crowds,” Steve told him, but the shaking of his voice made it clear that that it wasn’t so simple.

Mike nodded, and said something to the woman. She moved away from Steve, taking several other people with her. Within a minute, the crowd had dispersed. There wasn’t even a little group of people determined to speak to him.

Steve lowered his hands from his ears. They were shaking a little. He had to stop thinking about the crowd. “Is that really Sky?” he asked, pointing into room 0001.

The technicians exchanged glances.

“It is,” Gabe said, “Skylar. Sky in the game.”

“So everyone has a room here?”

“Almost.”

He turned to them, “Almost?”

“Well,” Mike said, “obviously we can’t have a room for someone with no body.”

Steve went rigid. He had been wondering when Herobrine would wake up, when he would hear the fanfare for him. Would he still have the white eyes outside of the game? Would he still look like Steve? Was Herobrine even a coma patient or was he just someone plugged into the game to shake things up? The truth, it seemed, was much worse than simply not being confined to the game.

“No body,” he said, “That’s Herobrine, isn’t it?”

“It is. Not much we can do about it.”

Now the man’s words were taking on new meanings. “I have a way to follow you,” wasn’t talking about the portal, winning the game. It meant that Herobrine had a way out into the real world, the long dream. Steve was going to have to trust him; he could see that, but he was going to worry too. He wasn’t going to sleep soundly until Herobrine was safe. Along with everyone else in the game, he guessed. But how could he leave the game without a physical body? He had no idea.

“You okay?” Gabe asked him.

Steve put the worry aside, slid it onto a back burner to simmer, and said, “Fine.”

Gabe sighed. “Look, Steve, we both know about you and Herobrine.”

Steve felt himself blush. He put his hands over his face. “You cannot be serious.”

“It’s okay,” Mike assured him, “it’s okay. We’re not judging you.”

“Did you tell her?” Steve asked, not looking up.

“No.” They didn’t even ask who, “we wouldn’t even if we didn’t have confidentiality requirements.”

“Thank you,” he said, daring to raise his head.

“We’re on your side,” Mike assured him.

“Will you tell your family?” Gabe asked.

“I’m not sure I can keep it secret once Herobrine is here,” Steve said before he could think. “He’s… affectionate.”

Both of the men looked startled. Maybe they had assumed what had happened was a one night type of thing.

“Once he’s here?” Gabe asked.

Steve just smiled and shook his head. He wasn’t going to spill all of Herobrine’s secrets to these two. Obviously they didn’t know anything.

“Someone woke up?” Another excited voice came down the hallway that didn’t lead to patient rooms. All three of them turned to look. “Steve?!” Adam broke into a sprint.

“Adam!” He moved away from the technicians as fast as his taxed body would allow.

Adam hit him hard, but the embrace was welcome. This body hadn’t been hugged in years, and it let Steve know without question he needed a lot more human contact.

“You idiot,” Adam said to him, “you goddamn idiot. I will never understand you.”

“You will soon,” Steve thought, “I’ve figured myself out finally.” He said, “Are the twins okay?”

“They’re doing great,” Adam stepped away from him, “started kindergarten a few months ago.”

“They weren’t burned too badly, were they?”

“Not at all.”

Steve sighed in relief.

“You were the one who got burned,” Adam said.

He looked down at his body. His brand new body. He examined his arms, pulled up the legs of his pants to look at his legs, felt over his back and stomach. Finally he found it. It was a patch of skin maybe five inches across on his back, almost perfectly centered above his shoulders. It had a strange rough texture to it.

“Not that bad,” he said to himself, remembering the bruises that had covered his entire body less than a week before and his shattered ribs less than a day.

Adam was looking at him like he had never met him before. The technicians, on the other hand, looked like a couple of proud parents. Steve looked back and forth between them then rolled his eyes.

“Something fell on me?” he asked Adam and got a nod in return.

He missed Herobrine. He could really use a hug right now, one of those little kisses against the back of his neck, a few words in his smooth deep voice. Doing this was going to be difficult to say the least. He could practically feel Herobrine’s fingers running over the burn scar on his back. Waiting was painful.

“Tell me you’re here as a physical therapist,” he said to Adam.

“That’s right.”

“You did it!” He cried, and hugged Adam again.

“Oh forget me,” the man said in annoyance, “You’re the one who just woke up from a coma. How did you manage that?”

Steve stopped beaming. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and his hand started rubbing the inside of his other arm. It was a steadying self-touch, as if he was telling himself it would be okay. “I had help,” he said, “a lot of it.”

“Help,” Adam repeated. He was trying to read Steve, to figure him out. He used to be able to. Once he could have glanced at his face and known exactly what the problem was, but now he couldn’t. All of the queues had changed. “Help from?”

“It’s built right into the game,” Steve said, “there’s a stimulus embedded into the ending. All I needed to do was find it.”

“So,” Adam said, “you beat the game--”

“I killed a dragon,” Steve said, “which I didn’t know was coming, by the way. A dragon is not something to surprise someone with.” he turned to the technicians, “Whoever decided that this design was a good idea had a massive blind spot. There’s nothing whatsoever in the game to guide the players.”

“We know,” Mike said, “but hey, we’ve got you to prove it’s possible.”

“I don’t count,” Steve said, “Herobrine wrote me a guide.”

“Herobrine?” Adam sounded confused.

Mike just stared at him, but Gabe got it “Ah,” he said, “that makes sense.”

“Where is it now?” Mike asked.

“I gave it to Clarence,” Steve said, and got blank looks from everyone. “Clarence,” he said again, and then, “if you tell me Clarence was a figment of my imagination or something I’m going to lose my mind.”

“No, no,” Gabe said, “we just don’t know everyone’s names in the game. We have repeating names, you see, so we to change some of them. Do you know his number?”

“No,” Steve exclaimed, “the only people whose numbers I knew were Herobrine and 4980, and we never really talked.”

There was a heavy pause.

“I guess I could just walk around the rooms until I saw him,” Steve said.

“No need,” blinked the screen behind Adam’s head, “Clarence is number 2069.”

Steve stared at it. He was getting tingles up and down his spine, familiar and alien all at once. It was like Herobrine’s presence, yet unlike it all together.

Adam turned to look at the screen, “You’ll get used to that.”

“No, no,” Steve said, “hold on.” He walked to the screen. “You,” he said to it, “are like Herobrine, aren’t you.”

“Not exactly,” the screen said, “Janus is on the way.”

“Janus?” Steve thought.

“He’s awake?!” another voice, a woman’s. Steve again turned. She was tall and dark, strongly muscled. One hand covered her mouth as she saw him. She didn’t look as happy as the others. She was thinking of other things.

“Oh finally,” she said, “something promising. I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about how Herobrine is doing?”

Steve closed his mouth tight. He clenched his teeth. His whole body was insisting that this was a bad idea. Something occurred to him, and he felt hot anger flare in his chest. He remembered the cell, the letter tucked into the book, addressed to Janus, damp in places like Herobrine had been crying while he wrote it. He had never seen it from that perspective: that he had released Herobrine from the cell, that he had freed him. It was no wonder Herobrine had felt the need to help him after that. He must have hated that place so much.

Janus saw him getting angry, she must have, because she backed away from him. Maybe his face just looked too much like Herobrine’s for her.

“You did that,” Steve said softly. He felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. He was going over and over the movements in his head. No sword, but a fist would work, and even though she was taller than him he would be able to take her. Maybe. This body wasn’t as strong as his other one.

“What?” Janus said.

“Easy, Steve,” the screen behind her read, “she’s no threat.”

He glared at it, then turned away, breathing deeply. He said nothing to Janus. He was suddenly tired. “Adam,” he said, “are you going to make me run laps around the building?”

“Not for a long time,” Adam assured him, “it’s too hot outside.”

“Where are we anyway?” Steve asked.

“See for yourself,” Adam said, walking down the hallway a little. He pulled open a curtain.

Steve followed him and looked out. It was sand and dust for miles around. They were in the middle of a desert.

“I guess the land was cheap,” He thought, “and the building cost. We’re not that isolated, but would they want to be?”

There was a city or a town right over the next hill. He could see the buildings.

“How much media coverage has this thing had?” he asked.

“Quite a bit since our second death,” Mike said.

Steve shuddered, “Gaimon,” he said.

“Cause of death was a stroke,” Gabe said, “complications from the crash that put him into the coma is the best guess we have.”

Steve turned to look at him, “Really?”

He nodded, “I mean the injuries from the crash were pretty bad. A car can’t really hit a tree at 70 and be expected to stay intact. They had to pull a branch out of his lung. A clot must have gotten into his brain at some point and we missed it, and so… one day he just went. Nothing anyone could have done, but the media likes to point fingers.”

“We’re lucky we could keep all of you,” Mike said, “a lot of families wanted to pull out.”

“A stroke,” Steve said to himself, “he had a stroke.” He felt that piece of the puzzle falling into place too. That was good. Herobrine wasn’t really guilty of killing Gaimon. He had been a time bomb from the beginning. “What about 4980?”

The technicians exchanged glances, looked down.

“What?” Steve asked.

Janus was the one who spoke. “Dylan Rogers went into Anaphylactic Shock and died when his throat swelled closed.” She said, “after a penicillin injection.”

Steve looked back out the window. Desert for miles. Very few plants to be seen. “That explains a lot,” he said.

“Were you with him in the game when he died?” Janus asked.

“A few people were,” he said, “we tried to save him. Couldn’t do it.”

“You almost died too,” Adam burst out, like the memory alone almost had him in a panic, “I was there.”

“When was that?” Steve asked.

“A little over six weeks ago.”

“Oh. That.” He shuddered, “No one else will have that happen to them.”

“What about the rest of the players?” Mike asked, “will they follow you out soon?”

Steve shrugged. He sat down on the floor, arms crossed on the windowsill, “I don’t know. It’ll depend on how soon Clarence follows me, and if he brings anyone with him, and how angry Brine is. He said he was going to get everyone out eventually.”

“You don’t sound excited,” Adam said. He sounded a little bit nervous.

“Right now,” Steve said, “I want them all to suffer for a long time.”

Silence for a long moment. Steve closed his eyes, he was slipping down again. He could feel it. He wanted to pull himself back up, but he wasn’t sure how. 

Finally Gabe lifted him to his feet, “Let’s get you into your own room,” he said, “then you can sleep.”

Steve only nodded. He was suddenly exhausted. Neither Adam or Janus accompanied them. The technicians brought him to a spare room that had been quickly set up for an occupant. The cot wasn’t much, but it was more than he had had for a long time. Steve sat on it, and only then did he allow himself to say the words out loud, “I should have stayed in the game.”

“No,” said another new voice, “you shouldn’t have.”

Steve looked up. There was a man standing across the room from him. He looked just how anyone would look if they happened to be blond and in their mid twenties and dressed all in green. “I’m Ben,” the man said, “nice to meet you.”

Steve said, “Hello.”

“You and I,” Ben said, “are going to be spending a lot of time chatting, so you’d better get used to me right now.”

Steve didn’t respond. He had been right on the verge of breaking down and now he was being forced to wait.

“I’m here,” Ben said, “to help you save Herobrine.”

That perked him up, “Save Herobrine?”

Ben nodded, “Look, Steve or Player or whoever you are now, I know you’re tired and you just left the love of your life in another world he can’t escape from.”

Steve turned red, “He’s not--”

“Really?” Ben said, “because if he’s not, if you’re not sure, we have other problems to resolve besides getting him out of there.”

Steve stuttered something that didn’t make any sense.

“I’m not here to judge you,” Ben told him gently, “I just want my little brother out of that game and safe.”

“Your little brother,” Steve repeated, “So you’re like him?”

In response Ben reached up to the screen laid into the wall and put his hand through it. A version of his hand appeared on the screen as he did it, like he had put his hand through a glass panel. “You already said that,”

“You’re the one inside the screens?” Steve asked.

Ben nodded, “I’m not really like Herobrine. I was human once, he was never human. I can make a picture of a body and project it into the real world. He cannot. He is confined to the space of a single game. I have the whole world of electricity to roam. But, from your point of view and for our purposes, I am very much like him.”

Steve took a moment to absorb all that, and then he did what he was getting good at: he decided he didn’t care about any of that. He just wanted Herobrine safe, and if this person knew how to do it, he would help any way he could. “What do you mean by ‘rescue him’?” he asked.

Ben gave him an approving grin, like he knew what had just happened inside Steve’s head and appreciated it. Then he got down to the details. “There is only a single copy of Minecraft in use in the world,” he said, “and it’s being used in this building.”

“Minecraft?” Steve said, “that’s the title of the game?”

Ben nodded, “Mining and crafting. Pretty bland in my opinion, but even the title was huge once.”

“Okay, so there’s only one copy of it left,” Steve said, and then it clicked. “You just said Herobrine is trapped inside the game.”

Ben nodded.

“So… what happens if the last copy of the game gets deleted?”

“To answer that,” Ben said, “I have to tell you a long story, and you’re too tired to hear it now. You should sleep and I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Just one question,” Steve said, “Herobrine told me he has a way out of the game, that he can survive.”

Ben nodded, “He does. I gave it to him.”

“So there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“Probably not,” Ben said, “not with you here, but I’ll tell you about all that over breakfast tomorrow.”

“What do I need to do?” Steve said, determined not to let it drop.

Ben did something odd. He shrank, became small and childish. The face he had worn rounded and his cheeks grew a little pudgy, and it was a young boy staring back at Steve, small and vulnerable.

“You,” the boy said in his high unbroken voice, “need to love him. He needs somewhere to run to, something to look forward to on this side of the screen. All you have to do is love him and wait for him here. Can you do that?”

Steve nodded. Tears were stinging him again, “I can.” he said.

“You do that, Steve, and I will make sure you always have a home and a family.”

Steve laughed, “You need to keep my family away from me,” he said.

“I’m not talking about your mother,” Ben told him, “there are more than just two monsters in the world. What I’m offering is a place to run to if you need it one day.”

There was a knock at the door to the room. Steve looked at Ben, but the boy had vanished. He stood up and opened the door.

“We forgot to give you this,” Gabe said, holding out a bag.

“What is it?”

“Your belongings that came with you into the facility. They’ve been in a storage room with everyone’s stuff.”

“Thank you,” he took the bag.

“You’re welcome. Come out for dinner, okay? The people in the know say you should get some solid food into your system soon.”

Steve found he was hungry. He was starving and he wasn’t tired at all. “All I needed,” he thought, “was a little reminder of what’s at stake here.” “I will,” he said, “I’ll be out after I sort through this stuff.”

Gabe gave him a grin, “I see you’re alive again.”

Steve blinked, and then said, “Yes I am. I just needed some time to think.”

“Mike will be relieved. He was freaking out when we left you.”

“Sorry to scare you,” Steve opened the top of the bag. The inside was musty, “I’d be happy to eat with you both. Maybe you can fill me in on what’s happening.”

He was gratified to see the grin on the man’s face didn’t falter. “We’ll be back in a bit then.”

Steve closed the door as he walked away.

Ben was back, smiling too. He didn’t grin like Herobrine did, but it wasn’t exactly a child’s innocent smile either.

“There you are!” he exclaimed, “I knew you were in there somewhere.”

Steve rolled his eyes at him, “You shook me loose.”

“I guess I am good for something after all,”

The bantering reminded him of Herobrine again, sent a pang through him. It would be so easy to lose him. Steve upturned the bag of his belongings on the bed. The blue ceramic pendant was among them, strung onto a chain that had gone red with rust. Steve picked it up, remembering for the first time the man who had given it to him, the kiss on the forehead, the promise, “You will always have a place with Us.”

“Looks like I’m not the first one to make you a promise,” Ben said from behind him.

Steve nodded, “I’ll stay here,” he said, “I’ll stay here and wait for him. That’s all I need to do.”

“That’s right.” Ben seemed happy. “Thank you, Steve, you don’t know what this means for Herobrine, for everyone.”

“I know he’s trying to help everyone escape the game,” Steve said, “someone should help him too.”

“He’s too nice for his own good,” the man-shaped thing said. “But I hope he succeeds for selfish reasons. If one of us does something good, especially something this public, all of us will benefit.”

“Nice isn’t really how I’d describe him,” Steve slipped the rusted chain around his neck and rubbed the little ceramic pendant. His panic button, his emergency escape route.

“How then?”

Steve shrugged, “touchy, brusk, uncommunicative, too fond of fighting,” and then, grudgingly, “sweet. Thoughtful.”

“You care about him,” Ben said in a totally different tone of voice, “he’s lucky.”

Steve turned to look at him, but he was gone again, this time before the knock on his door even occurred. Steve took a deep breath and opened it. He was ready to start this new life out here, to make a place for Herobrine to come to when he was done with his task.

“You’re hungry?” Mike asked him.

“Starving,” Steve closed the door as he stepped out. The pendant hung around his neck in plain view, and both of the technicians stared at it in perplexity.

Steve touched it a little self-consciously, “I’ll tell you about it,” he offered, “it’s an interesting story.”

Gabe brightened up at once, and they started chatting to him about benign topics, helping him get acquainted with the building. Steve said a little prayer of gratitude in his head that he had such kind guardian angels. The last thing he needed was another vengeful companion.


	64. Waiting

Ben told Steve about them over breakfast. Steve really wasn’t hungry after stuffing himself the night before, but he took a cup of coffee. He hadn’t slept well. He knew he wouldn’t sleep well until Herobrine was okay. All it took was a single moment of stillness and he would start imagining all the things that Herobrine could be experiencing at that moment. Certainly the rest of the players were angry enough to carry some of the actions out.

“I take it Herobrine didn’t tell you about the rest of us.” Ben adjusted the glasses he had pushed up into his hair. They had green frames, but he was wearing a white lab coat over his clothes to hide the strange color.

“I think he mentioned you a couple times indirectly,” Steve looked the man over again. Ben could wear many different faces, it seemed. This one was nice enough, but he didn’t feel any kind of attraction toward Ben at all. If anything he was a little put off by him.

“Probable,” Ben said, “but this isn’t about me. There are others to discuss.”

Steve broke a piece of toast with grape jelly off and put it into his mouth. Real food was amazing compared to the stuff in the game. There were so many different flavors, so many options, that his head was spinning. Herobrine would love this.

Ben was thinking the same thing. “Let’s start farther back,” he said, “I think I can trust you not to hate me.”

Steve didn’t offer an opinion, but he kept listening.

“I did something cruel to Herobrine once,” Ben explained.

Steve said, “What?”

“I brought him out of the game and into this world.”

“You can do that?” He had adjusted himself to the idea that Herobrine was confined in the game until he used his escape route

“I couldn’t give him a real body,” Ben explained, “only one like the one I’m using now. Not really solid. He stayed for a few days with me and a few friends.” He closed his eyes, “and then I had to send him back to the game. He couldn’t stay there forever, even though he wanted to. That was the worst thing I’ve done to one of my own: shown them what they craved more than anything else and then took it away from them.”

Steve said nothing. Herobrine’s actions were clarifying by the second.

“If I had given him the escape then, he would have used it immediately. How he hated me,” Ben shook his head, “but eventually hatred turned to complicity and he went on, for a while. Then the game began to fade. People stopped playing. Fewer and fewer joined him in that world, fewer and fewer stayed to create where he could observe and speak to them. That was when I gave him the escape, on the condition he would not use it yet. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. And then, eventually, no one played any more.”

“What then?” Steve asked.

“I built him a room where he would be safe and, at his request, made him sleep.”

That little cell. The refuge and the prison.

“And he slept,” Ben said, “for a long time. Until, finally, someone played the game again. Until you all came along, and then the automated system in this place dug him up and ran one of its personality tests on him, and low and behold he matched up with someone else loaded into the game, and you know the rest.”

Steve nodded. He made himself take another bite of food, even though he was focussed on the story now.

“But that’s not the important thing,” Ben said, “there were others like Herobrine.”

“Not from Minecraft,” Steve said.

“No. From other games. One from something called Pokemon. You wouldn’t know it. It’s too old. Another from an online game. Both of them were like Herobrine. I set up ways for them to communicate too, even before I brought him out into the real world. Communicating on the internet was nowhere near as difficult or as painful for anyone. They were smarter than him, I guess, wiser. When I asked them if they wanted to see the world, they said no.”

“Wise?” Steve thought, “they avoided the hurt, I guess.”

“I always wonder if I had forced them, showed them more of the outside, would they have done what they did?” Ben sighed, “or would they have tried at least to save themselves.”

Steve knew where this was going. He felt himself sicken, and pushed away the toast. “Are you saying that they let themselves die?” he asked.

Ben nodded, “If Herobrine were to be in the game when the last copy of it was deleted,” he said, “he would be deleted too. He’s part of the game after all, part of the code.”

“Okay,” Steve raised his hands, “that’s enough. I get it.”

“No, you don’t.” Ben pulled a flat black device from a pocket of the lab coat. It looked like an old-school tablet. “There is a very real possibility that, given the choice, Herobrine will want to go that route too.”

Steve shook his head, “I can’t believe that.”

“The Herobrine you’re familiar with,” Ben said, tapping at the screen of the tablet, “is Herobrine happy, with companionship, in love. Haven’t you caught a glimpse of his other side?”

“I have,” Steve admitted after a second, “but it always seemed like he was only anxious or tired or stressed. It never lasted long.”

Ben nodded. He flipped the screen of the device around.

Steve hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been pictures of corpses. He jerked away from the images. The cafeteria was deserted except for them and a single janitor sweeping up, and he was all the way on the other side of the room.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said, “but I can’t think of another way to get you to understand.”

“What are these?” Steve asked. The picture on the screen had changed to another image: another dead body. It was the same one. A different setting, a different time of day, but the same white skin, the same long dark hair, and both in a bathtub with the water dyed red.

“The other monsters,” Ben said, “they cannot die. It’s impossible for them, but they try. They commit suicide over and over and over. That man there,” he tapped the back of the head in the picture, “if you met him, you would swear he’s perfectly content with his life, that every moment he spends breathing is a gift. And then you’d wake up in the middle of the night and walk to the bathroom and find that.”

Steve swallowed, “So Herobrine might want to kill himself?”

“It’s something that has to be taken into account,” Ben said, “but if he does, it’s going to be a product of seeing his two friends give up on their own lives and being surrounded by these other creatures who long to die than pure biology. He has no body, like I said. Those of us without bodies don’t want to die, as a rule. We’re happy as we are, or content at least, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get worn down and tired.”

“So my job,” Steve said, “is to provide him with motivation to stay alive, if I need to.”

Ben nodded, “but only if you need to. I’m going to take him a message that you’re here and you’re safe, but other than that I don’t want you to communicate with him.”

Steve shook his head, “After everything you just told me? I want to at least write to him.”

“You can’t,” Ben pressed him, “you need to stay something that’s only available out here. I don’t want him to think he can make everything right with you before he allows himself to be deleted. If you start communicating, it takes away some of the power you’ll have to pull him out when he needs it.”

“If he needs it,” Steve insisted. He sighed, head in his hands, “I should have stayed with him,” he said, “we could have gone after everyone else. Why did he make me go first?”

“Because he wants you safe,” Ben said, “and based on what I saw, out here with me and your technicians is much safer than being in the game.”

Steve raised his head from his hands. “You promise me one thing,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at Ben.

“Just one.”

“You make him understand I love him even though I’m out here,” Steve said, “tell him I love him and that I’m out here to show him what grape jelly tastes like and all the annoying exercises Adam is going to make me do to ‘rehabilitate’ me.”

“I will,” Ben said, “I promise that. He needs to know you’re waiting for him. Thank you again for doing this.”

“It’s better than my other options,” Steve said, “and I’m not going home without knowing he’s safe.”

Again that shift in tone, “I envy him,” Ben said, “I really do.”

Steve didn’t have to ask why. Ben, being what he was, hadn’t felt physical affection in a long time. And while sex wasn’t everything, definitely wasn’t when it came to Herobrine, it helped things along. He didn’t look up at Ben until he heard the man get up and walk away. He didn’t want to start any kind of relationship with him. Even a friendship was pushing it too far.

Then he remembered and groaned. “Adam,” he said, “he’s going to run me ragged, I just know it.”

Adam didn’t run him ragged. He subscribed to a school of thought that indicated less was more when it came to physical therapy. That wasn’t to say that it wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t sparring with Herobrine painful or getting stoned in the street painful.

“I’m telling you,” Adam said, “you should stop. You can’t exhaust yourself.”

Steve looked up at him, “I’m nowhere near exhausted.”

“Just… sit down and take a break, would you?”

Steve stood up straight and walked around the small room, more annoyed than anything. It wasn’t even that hard.

“What’s the rush?” Adam asked.

“I want to be done with physical therapy before anyone else wakes up.” Steve sighed, “If you give me the all clear I’ll start working out on my own, get back up to strength.”

“What’s so bad about the others?” Adam asked.

“I just don’t want to be around them.” Steve started bouncing on the balls of his feet. He had psyched himself up for this and he was being disappointed.

“Okay,” Adam said, “if you really want to work that hard, you can, but you need to take rest days or you’ll burn yourself out.”

“I know how to do it,” Steve assured him.

He worked at it hard. He had maybe two weeks, a month at the most, before Clarence followed him through. He wanted some of his physique back before that happened. He really wanted to recover all of his muscle before Herobrine made an appearance. It wasn’t all important. He kept telling himself Herobrine wouldn’t care whether or not he looked the same as he did in the game, but he had liked the way he looked in the game, and he guessed his body was capable of achieving that strength again.

As soon as Adam said he was good, he started running in the mornings, around the inside of the barrier fence and focusing on his upper body in the gym with Adam. It irritated Adam a bit, but this way he was working toward a goal and he could actually get some sleep at night.

It was on his second day running that he met the dog.

It came out of the sparse bushes, a huge shaggy thing that looked much too large and hot to be running around in the desert. Steve stopped as he saw it, instinctively afraid of such a large unknown animal, but the dog started wagging its tail, and walked up to him. It gave him a doggish sort of smile.

“Hey boy,” Steve said, cautiously rubbing its head, “I haven’t seen you around before.”

The dog made a happy grumbling noise, as if to say, “I think I like you.”

Steve checked for a collar, but it wasn’t wearing one. He supposed it could have a chip implanted.

“You wanna stick with me for a little while?” he asked it, “see if we can find your owner?”

It just looked at him. Steve stood up and turned back toward the compound. He started walking, and the dog followed behind him. When they got back to the compound, the first person they saw was Janus. She was standing in the hallway just inside the door on the phone with someone, obviously not willing to venture out into the heat. As soon as she saw the dog, she backed up.

It leapt out in front of Steve and braced its front legs, all the fur on its back standing up. A feral snarl ripped from its throat.

Steve flinched, “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he said apologetically to Janus. “Down,” he told the dog in his most commanding voice, “leave it.”

It looked at him, the fur on its back falling. It pushed its head into his leg. Steve rubbed the ruff around its neck.

“Whatever the hell that is,” Janus said, “it is not a dog.”

“Third person I’ve met that’s not what they seem,” Steve said, still rubbing the animal’s ears.”

She flinched a little. He’d struck a nerve somewhere, but Janus didn’t interest him.

“Ah well,” he said, “no getting rid of it now I suppose.”

“You made the mistake of bringing it inside.” Janus said, “it’s your problem now.”

“You’re not going to be a bother, are you?” Steve asked the dog shaped thing. It seemed to shake its head. “There we go,” he said happily, “you’re here to protect me, aren’t you?” An affirmative wag of the tail. “It’s appreciated,” Steve said to it, “I’m going to finish my run.”

The dog followed him back out the door and all the way around the perimeter of the building twice, not so much as panting. Janus was right: it definitely wasn’t a dog.

Clarence was surprised how fast the progress went once he knew what he was supposed to be doing. In less than three weeks, he found himself standing in the snow, looking at a wooden structure that someone had build over the entrance to a mineshaft.

“This is it.” He said, and stepped down into the hole. It had been lit up all the way down with torches and as he went down the air warmed. At the bottom of the stairs was a hallway, an immense structure of stone bricks. Clarence followed the torches down the hallway, then down a flight of stairs, and he found it there, waiting for him. The portal was already in the frame, a spinning void of stars suspended over lava. It was awe inspiring.

Waiting for him on the steps to the portal was Herobrine. He was just sitting there, head in his hands.

“You should rest before you jump in there,” the monster said.

Clarence just stared at him.

“That’s what Steve did,” Herobrine said.

“Steve?” he said, “you mean Player?”

“Steve,” Herobrine repeated, like it was painful just to say it, “you saw the message same as everyone else.”

“That was Player?”

Herobrine nodded.

“He beat the game,” Clarence said, “he actually did it.”

Herobrine looked tired for a moment, tired and in pain. For just that second, Clarence felt empathy for him. He looked like a man in mourning. “It’s a dragon,” Herobrine said, “you have to kill a dragon. If you fail, I’ll get you and you can try again right away. If you succeed, jump into the portal and you win the game.”

“Why are you telling me?” Clarence said, “you didn’t say anything in the book about it.”

“Steve didn’t appreciate the surprise. If you’ll let me have the book, I’ll update it.” Herobrine said, “and give it to someone else, keep it going.”

“Wait, you actually want everyone to escape?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Herobrine said, “None of you belong here.”

“Oh,” Clarence said.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” Herobrine said, “but just do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“When you beat the game,” Herobrine said, “and see him, give him a message. Tell him I miss him and that I know Ben is there.”

“That’s all, ‘I miss you, and I know Ben is there’?”

“That’s all.”

“Okay,” Clarence said, “I can do that.”

Herobrine got to his feet. He moved like he was tired too. “The book,” he said, holding out a hand.

Clarence gave it to him. “Maybe you should find someone who’ll make copies,” he suggested, “If more people have the instructions, more people will be able to win and leave.”

Herobrine nodded, “I know just who.”

“I didn’t know you were trying to help us,” Clarence said to him, “I swear I didn’t.”

“Shut up before I hit you.” Herobrine turned and walked away, “Tell Stevie I miss him and leave it at that.”

Steve showered before breakfast as he did every day, scrubbing the desert dust and sweat out of his hair. He was still a little overheated from his morning run, red in the face. The dog trotted at his heels as he walked to the cafeteria and sat down with Mike and Gabe. The animal curled up on top of his feet, which it knew annoyed Steve, but they were far past the stage where he put up a fuss about it. He gave it a piece of bacon, and the dog licked his fingers clean.

“You’re looking well,” Mike said to him, “putting on muscle faster than I thought possible.”

“Nothing else to do around here besides run and read,” Steve said, “Adam throws a fit every time I put more than twenty pounds on a weight so I’m supplementing the physical therapy.”

“Normally I’d say not to do that sort of thing, but in your case it seems to be working out just fine.”

“Are you reading anything interesting?” Gabe cut into the conversation. He had an interest in literature, if a minor one.

“I’m trying to get through some Shakespeare someone sent to me,” Steve sighed, “I guess that’s what’s keeping me motivated to run.”

They both laughed.

“Have the news vans stopped showing up yet?” Steve asked.

“Not yet. They’ll get here at ten, stay for three hours, then give up and go home again.” Mike sounded disparaging, as he always did.

“Just think,” gabe said, “if only they could be bothered to get up two hours earlier they would catch your little act every morning.”

“That might be worth something,” Steve said, “I’m sure someone would pay for it.”

“You’re more confident than I thought you’d be,” Gabe said.

Steve just shrugged, “I’ve got some things going for me.”

“Ah! He admits it at last!” He clapped his hands.

Steve rolled his eyes but didn’t respond.

A tinny fanfare echoed from the speakers on the walls sounded. The technicians both looked up, then jumped to their feet and rushed out of the room.

Steve stayed right where he was. He wrapped both hands around his mug of coffee.

The dog stood up and put its head on his knee.

“It’s starting,” Steve said, giving it a rub, “it’s happening. I don’t know whether to be excited or scared.”

It whined in commiseration and gave his hand a lick as if to say, “I’m here for you.”

“I’ll wait for him here,” Steve told it. “I’m sure he’ll come to me eventually.” He ate the rest of his breakfast and got another cup of coffee. And he waited, idly stroking the coarse fur of the animal under the table.

Eventually, Clarence did find him. He came into the cafeteria grinning like a loon, still with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders over a set of thin clothes and his hair damp from the pod. His own set of technicians walked with him, just as happy as Mike and Gabe had been when Steve woke up. He was a little taller outside of the game; he could bump Steve’s chin with the top his head. He was thinner too. Much of the muscle was absent from his frame. If that was how Steve had first looked, he was glad he had worked so hard to get his weight back.

As soon as he saw Steve, Clarence lost the smile. He walked over, leaving his technicians standing in the doorway. Steve watched him approach with a resigned indifference. If Adam had been there, he would have recognized the look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Clarence said.

“Sorry really doesn’t make much difference,” Steve said flatly.

From below the table the dog growled, deep and guttural. Steve hushed it without thinking.

Clarence flinched, “Why do you have a dog?”

“It’s guarding me,” Steve said, “against what and why I don’t know. It’s not a dog.”

“Player,” Clarence said, “I am so sorry for what happened.”

“Enough of that,” Steve said, “sorry means nothing. I said that. What do you want?”

Clarence looked like he might start crying, and Steve felt a pang of guilt, but then the memory of the screaming crowd and Herobrine shot and bloody came back and it dissipated.

“I have a message for you,” Clarence said, “from Herobrine.”

Steve looked at him expectantly, trying to disguise the fact that his heart was suddenly pounding.

“It’s ‘I miss you,’” Clarence said, “and he says he knows Ben is here.”

The brevity of the message was almost cruel, Steve thought, but it was only a momentary slip. Then he was sighing. “I miss him too,” he said, and then, directing his voice toward the wall, “I suppose even that would be too much, wouldn’t it?”

The screen came to life on queue, “You suppose correctly,” then, more kindly, “remember what I said.”

“I remember,” Steve said, “it still doesn’t feel good.”

“I know.” The screen shut off again.

Steve stood up with a sigh. He gathered up all three plates still on the table, scraping everything onto Mike’s so he could carry it to the trash can more easily. The dog padded along behind him.

“I thought that you might have gone home by now,” Clarence said from behind him.

Steve’s steps almost stopped. He shuddered but didn’t say anything. Ben had assured him that his siblings were doing just fine. He could communicate with them all he wanted, but it was impossible to talk to his siblings without going through his mother, and he couldn’t do that. He had only recently killed the dragon. He wasn’t strong enough yet to do it again.

“Player?” Clarence asked

“My name is Steve,” he put the plates into the plastic bin on top of the trash can and left the room. He would spend a while reading, he thought, and then go face Adam and tell him he wasn’t going to work with him anymore. Soon enough they’d be back to being friends, not therapist and patient. That would be good all around.

“Herobrine said the same thing,”

“Brine called me by that name in the game,” Steve smiled at the memories. 

“How did that happen?” Clarence asked.

“And that question,” Steve said, “officially crosses the line. Enough. I’m going to read. I’ll be at physical therapy in two hours. You can twist all the information you want about me out of Adam.”

“Who’s Adam?”

“The physical therapist,” Steve said, “and a childhood friend of mine.”

The flow of players leaving the game began in earnest then. Clarence and Steve were the only two who made it out in one try. The others came through with stories they would only share with other players about how Herobrine had broken them out of cages in The Nether and taken them back to the End Portal so they could try again right away. Steve found that if he didn’t say much, he could be semi-included in these group discussions. Away from the game, having actually had a conversation with Herobrine, the other players felt they had maybe been harsh on him. They were slowly coming around to Steve’s own point of view.

They also came with stories of resistance fighters, those who would not give in and refused to take one of the guides that were floating around the overworld now. They could not see how Herobrine could motivate them to leave the game with violence. Three people even said they had seen him be disabled by warriors of one resistance movement weilding a variety of weapons. That news made Steve cringe with horror, but when he asked Ben in private, he was assured Herobrine required no assistance to recover or to deal with the threat.

After a little while, each person that came through carried a message for him from Herobrine. Sometimes they were short phrases, sometimes one sentence. Always they hurt.

One day a woman stepped up to his table and said she had a message for him. Steve nodded to her, and she said, “Why.”

“Why?” He repeated, and then he had to retreat to his room to avoid crying in public. He was killing Herobrine. He just knew he was.

But the next person who came through walked up to him a few days later, and then simply said, “Oh.”

“Oh?” Player repeated, confused this time, and then it clicked. He hurried back to his room again, but this time it was to find a paper and pencil. He wrote “Y-O.” Herobrine was spelling something out for him.

Over the course of the next month, fourteen more people brought him letters. Two of them actually emerged in the opposite order Herobrine had intended, so for a day or so Steve fretted about what he could be trying to spell that had “aer” as a word. Finally, after a month, he had it. He took the finished message back to his room, hoping no one else would take the time to piece this together.

“You are my Sunshine,” the paper said.

“Ben,” he said, “what is he trying to tell me? I have no idea.”

In response, the tablet sitting by his bed lit up, and a song started to play. “You are my Sunshine,” by Johnny Cash.

Steve sat and listened until his shoulders were shaking. It was a love song. Herobrine was sending him a love song, but not just a love song. It was a song that captured the agony of being apart from him.

“I can’t do this,” he said into his hands when it was over, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. It’s killing him.”

The dog whined and licked one of his hands.

“Maybe you should make friends among the other players,” Ben suggested hesitantly.

Steve took a deep breath to stop himself from screaming, and instead he said, “It’s not me I’m worried about. I’m just biding my time. He’s the who’s in trouble. He’s the one who needs help.” He looked up. Ben was wearing his little boy face. Maybe it was the real face. “Take him another message,” he said, “a small one.”

Ben shook his head.

“Please,” Steve said, “he needs to know I’m still waiting. It’s been almost three months.”

“What do you want to tell him?”

Steve thought, “I liked the song,” he said finally, “and I can’t wait to hear him sing it.”

“I think that would be acceptable,” Ben said.

“Thank you,” Steve put his face back in his hands and rocked on the spot a little, “thank you.”

“He’s going to keep sending messages,” Ben told him.

“I’ll keep receiving them,” Steve said, “it’s the only way he can communicate if he needs help.”

A knock came at his door. He wiped his eyes clear before he opened it and found Adam standing there.

“You okay?” the man asked, “Clarence said you left breakfast early.”

Steve felt a great wash of relief, “You need to see this,” he said, stepping back to let Adam in.

“What?”

Steve picked up the piece of paper, “Herobrine,” he said, “has been giving the people who wake up messages to bring to me.” He briefly explained what had happened, and then played the song again from his tablet.

Adam sat on the bed beside him in silence, and when it was over he gave Steve a hug. His shaking wasn’t so bad the second time around. It was a beautiful song. He could see how Herobrine would choose it.

“You didn’t tell me you two were dating,” Adam said, “I would have spent more time with you before now. It must hurt.”

“It’s not really about me,” Steve admitted, “I have you and Gabe and Mike and this one,” he gave the dog a pat, “in there he doesn’t have anyone.”

“Of course it’s about you,” Adam said, “you’re the one he’s sending messages to, not anyone else.”

“He didn’t want me to beat the game,” Steve said, “he didn’t say so, but right before I stepped into the portal, he burst out with all this stuff like it was the last time he’d see me. At the time I thought it was sweet, overreacting a little, but sweet. Now it seems so desperate.”

Adam said nothing. He put his hands in his lap. Steve always got the short end of the stick, he was thinking. It was always Steve who ended up hurting. Ever since he knew him, it was always Steve who got hurt, and he would never let anyone else shoulder the burden for him. Except, apparently, Herobrine.

“You really didn’t know about this?” Steve asked.

“You’ve barely said three words to me. Not that I blame you, but you haven’t communicated much of anything. I’ve learned more about you from Clarence than I have from you.”

“I figured Gabe and Mike told you.”

“They aren’t allowed to tell me anything,” Adam protested, “the only reason they told me what they did is because I told them first.”

“What did they tell you?”

“That you’re gay,” Adam said, “and not much for company.”

“Wait, you knew that?” Steve asked.

“Of course I did,” Adam said, “you are totally oblivious to the existence of anything female.”

A soft smile then, a hint of humor, “I am, aren’t I?”

“You ignored the affections of like half your graduating class,” Adam said, “and the whole time I could not figure out what your problem was, whether you were too busy dealing with your home life or just weren’t interested at all… then I caught you staring at some random guy’s butt. I knew what your mother was like. I figured you were in denial.”

Steve sighed, his hand closing around the pendant around his neck. “I was,” he said, “for a long time. When I admitted it, I tried to find you, to get help, but you weren’t there and the building was on fire.”

“That reminds me,” Adam said, “did Dad hit you?”

Steve nodded, “When I woke him up, ya. It knocked me out, I think.”

“Damn him,” Adam said with feeling, “I hope his liver gives out and he kills himself.”

Steve didn’t respond. He looked at the ceramic pendant, and again in his head he heard the promise. Could he still cash in on it?

“Herobrine,” Adam said slowly, “is he kind to you?”

“Yes,” Steve said, “in a tough love sort of way. He’s got his own set of problems, and when he gets angry or hurt, sometimes he loses control a little. For a long time, he was as much in denial as me.”

“Tough love?”

“I wasn’t good at fighting in the game,” Steve said, “with a sword. I couldn’t do it. I tried and tried and eventually gave up. He wanted to teach me. He knew I’d never be able to beat the game without fighting, and he wouldn’t let it rest.”

“So he made you learn how to fight?” Adam asked.

“Well… no. He got me so angry I tried to hit him and he just kind of ran with it.”

“Well that’s definitely one way to do it,” Adam laughed, “did it help?”

“It did. It was fun.” He smiled, “not that he ever let me win any sparring matches.”

“Fun is more than you’ve had with anyone else I know of.”

“I didn’t really want to win them anyway,” Steve said, “I think he knew that.”

“Did you… have any other kind of fun?” Adam asked.

Steve looked at him sharply and found the man grinning suggestively. He felt himself flush, as he always did, but this was Adam. He could trust Adam. He nodded.

“And whose idea was that?”

“Mine,” Steve said. He felt himself smiling at the memory, the warmth of Herobrine’s arms, the way his body went from soft to hard as his muscles tensed and relaxed.

“You look like you enjoyed it,” Adam commented, snapping him back out of the fantasy.

“It would be hard not to enjoy it,” Steve said, “you’ve got a girlfriend. You know that.”

Now Adam was blushing a little. He liked to keep his private life private as much as Steve did. “You were scared of it though,” Adam said. “You thought it would get you damned or something.”

“I won’t know that until I die.”

“Did it feel like something that would get you sent to hell?”

“Not at all.”

“Not even afterwards?”

Steve shook his head, “for a moment maybe. Herobrine didn’t give me much time to think about it between kisses.”

“Okay,” Adam said, “not too much detail.”

“You don’t want to hear about it?” Steve teased, “you asked.”

“No,” Adam backpedalled. He stood up from the bed, “You’re definitely not scared anymore. That’s all I needed to know.” Then he said, “You know Clarence said you two were close.”

“Not really,” Steve said, “not in the same way.”

“This is going to be a strange question,” Adam warned him.

“I can guarantee I’ve heard stranger.”

“What does Herobrine make you feel?”

Steve frowned at him, “You’re going to have to clarify that.”

“You know… when he walks into a room you’re in, what’s the first thing that comes into your head? Do you get sweaty or does your heart race or?”

“Warm,” Steve said, “butterflies in my stomach, like there’s electricity going up my back, but mostly just warm.” 

Adam just looked at him.

“What?”

“That’s not a crush,” Adam said, “I thought maybe you were just crushing on him.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Clarence, what about him?”

“Now not much,” Steve said, “jittery and nervous at first. Nervous all around.”

“See,” Adam said, “that’s a crush.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “I’m not that inept at naming my feelings.”

“Of course not. You’ve learned a lot without me there.”

Ben spoke up then from by the wall. Adam jumped and stared at him. Steve had stopped being surprised at the sudden appearances after the first week. 

“He says he’s sorry,” Ben said.

“What for?” Steve asked.

“He hadn’t heard the whole song before,” Ben looked annoyed, “only the chorus. He didn’t know the rest of it was so melancholy.”

Steve sighed, some of the tension leaving him, “That makes me feel better. He’s going to beat himself up about this?”

“Probably,” Ben said, “but no more messages. We’ve pushed it too far.”

Steve nodded, “How many people are left in the game?”

“Less than two thousand,” Ben said, “after today. The ones who are left are all coming through in groups, so from here it should go fast.”

“What do you mean, no more messages?” Adam asked, ignoring the fact that Ben had disappeared again just as he had arrived.

Steve took a breath and started filling him in. He could trust Adam, and he needed another ally in this fight.

Ben was right: they came in packs, sometimes five or six people in one group. No more messages came from Herobrine through them. Steve was convinced Ben had made him stop sending them, but maybe Herobrine just wanted to keep their contact more private. Or perhaps his unintended harshness with the song had made him hesitant to communicate again.

Whatever the cause, Steve suddenly found himself under scrutiny by the other players. None of them had gone home. It wasn’t that none of them were ready to leave. All the players displayed the same fortitude and knowledge as Steve did, and Adam eventually gave up trying to pace them. They recovered from the comas at incredible rates. It was simply that none of them wanted to leave, and since none of their families were actually paying for them to be in the facility (the project was an experimental one, paid for by some large and shadowy corporation with nearly limitless reserves of money) no one made them leave.

It was unspoken, but they all knew that they could not leave until everyone was out of the game, until the last person had been read The End Poem, as it was titled, until the last pod was empty and the last celebratory fanfare played. Even Steve found himself drawn into their discussions.

An idea had been growing within the community of players for a long time. It came from seeing The End Poem and from speaking to Herobrine personally. He apparently took the time to speak to each person who entered The End before they stepped into the portal. The idea was a simple one: Herobrine was a player too. Herobrine was just as important as any of them. Even the resistance fighters, who had started to trickle in themselves, were guilty about hurting him.

At Steve’s request, everyone who knew about the details of his relationship with Herobrine kept it secret. Of course most of the others knew by then that he was Herobrine’s friend, but only Clarence, Adam, and the technicians knew they were more than that.

Steve fielded what questions he could about Herobrine, but for the most part he stayed quiet. He didn’t need to know that most of the players were still a little afraid of Herobrine.

So he waited and waited. It took almost five months until there was only one player left in the game. Clarence tried twice more to get close to him, but Steve rebuffed him both times. Clarence was more dense than Herobrine on that front. Where all Steve had to do was tell Herobrine he didn’t want to do something, he once was forced to push Clarence to get the message through his head. He didn’t like to do it, but he couldn’t bring himself to so much as touch anyone besides Herobrine.

Adam had asked if sleeping with Herobrine felt like something that would damn him. It didn’t. Cheating on him did.

It took a long time, but finally there came a day when there was only one person left in the game, a single body left in its pod. He was a tall man with red hair.

Steve took to sitting by his pod, waiting for him to wake up, but he didn’t, and he didn’t, and he didn’t. It had been months since the gap between groups had been as long as a week. It was approaching the 10 day mark when Steve got up the courage to ask Ben.

“What’s going on in there?”

“This last one has hidden himself away. Herobrine hasn’t been able to convince him to beat the game. In fact, he can’t even find him. I can’t tell if he’s really trying.”

“How much longer will it take?”

“Not long,” Ben assured him.

“Am I going to have to act?” Steve asked.

“Yes,” Ben said, “Yes you will, but not yet. We have to wait until this one is out.”

“Fine,” Steve said, “but I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”


	65. The Last Player

Herobrine found him sitting at the edge of a river. He was cross-legged and staring at the book on the rock in front of him.

“Look,” He said to the red-haired man, “I’m not going to sugar-coat this--”

The man jumped up and whirled to face him. He gasped in shock.

Herobrine raised an eyebrow. He was tired and he didn’t have the patience to do this. The last time he had slept properly had been the night before Steve beat the game. He would have rested in the bunker where they had spent the night together, but a survivor from the walled city had found it after only a week and torched the whole place, finishing the job they had started. “Are you done?” he asked.

The man nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Marshall.”

“Well, Marshall, I’ve been looking for you for a week, and I’d like you get a move on and beat the game.”

Marshall grabbed the book and threw it at him. Herobrine caught it. It was a copy of the guide. “I’m not going to,” Marshall said.

“I don’t have time for this,” Herobrine said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve got my sweetheart waiting out there for me, and if I leave so much as one person in this game I won’t be able to get to him.” It was the first time he had referred to Steve as anything other than a friend. It felt good.

“Your sweetheart?” Marshall said, “that rock you can’t crack?”

Herobrine nodded, “He’s stubborn.”

“Right,” there was such bitterness in his words Herobrine almost flinched. “Go to him then. I’ll stay here.”

“You want to stay in this world all by yourself? It gets lonely.”

“Being lonely in here is better than being with the people I know out there.”

“So you remember your life outside the game.” A statement, not a question.

“Yes I do,” Marshall said, “and I would rather stay here until I die than go back out.”

“That could be a lot less time than you think,” Herobrine said, “someone might decide to pull the plug on you.”

“I’d rather have that than go back to what’s waiting for me.” Marshall sounded dead certain, “I’d rather spend eternity in one of your cells than that.”

Herobrine sighed through his nose. “Walk with me,” he said. He turned and walked parallel to the river. When Marshall didn’t follow him right away he turned back, “I’m not going to force you to do anything. I just want to talk.”

“What about?”

“I’m going to tell you about someone you remind me of. He absolutely hates his previous life too.”

“Who’s that?”

“We call him Jack,” Herobrine said, “his real name is long gone.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Marshall said.

“I’ll tell you about Stevie.”

“Is that your sweetheart?”

“He is.”

“Do you love him?” It sounded hard to ask.

“I do.”

“Than he has a lot more out there than I do.”

Herobrine gave no response. It was better to let the man get it out of his system.

“Do you know what got him here?” Marshall asked.

“No.”

“I’ll tell you why I’m here. I tried to kill myself. Swallowed a whole bottle of my foster mom’s prescription drugs. Didn’t do what I wanted it to. Got my ass stuck here.”

No response.

“Did you stitch him back together?” Marshall asked, “because let me tell you; if he’s like me, you’re going to regret that. I’m so full of holes, I bleed no matter how many bandages I slap on them.”

No response.

“The others who remember, did you talk to them?”

“No.”

“You should have. We are not healthy. We’re all broken. car crashes, suicide attempts, beatings and muggings all around. None of us are here for good reasons.

“Your ‘sweetheart,’ did he remember? What are you going to get when you reach him? If you can, that is. It won’t be what you had the last time you saw him.”

Herobrine shivered, but still he said nothing. He had to have faith in Steve.

“What got him here?” Marshall asked, “Do you even know? 

“No.”

“Was he raped like me?” Marshall asked, “Was he religious, a special altar boy?”

“I don’t think so,” Herobrine said, thinking about how Steve had responded to him. His affirmations of pleasure still echoed around Herobrine’s head in quiet moments.

“Then he’s lucky.” Marshall said.

“He had other problems,” Herobrine said, “I think he was made to believe that being homosexual would get him punished by God. It took him a long time to relax.”

“Well isn’t that heartwarming.” So much sarcasm in the words it stung a little, but nevermind that.

“You ready to hear about Jack now?”

All the fight went out of Marshall and he walked to where Herobrine was standing, his head down. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that was inappropriate.”

“You can make it up to me by winning and leaving the game.”

“Will I get to meet this Steve person if I do?”

“I would say so,” Herobrine said, “I’ll give you a message to take to him when you leave. It’s the only way we can communicate.”

“When did you last hear from him?”

“Two months ago. A friend brought a message from him.”

“What did he say.”

“He said he liked the song I sent him.” Herobrine sighed, “and Ben told me to stop making him cry so much.”

“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.”

“We’ll see.”

Steve was sitting in the patient room when the red-haired man opened his eyes in the pod. He was on his feet immediately, opening the lid and helping him out into the world. The man shook his head, throwing globs of the semi-solid liquid everywhere. His technicians did the towelling off and put clothes on him. They were more relieved than celebratory. They had been waiting for a long time.

The man took one good look at Steve and started shaking. “You’re Steve, right?” he said.

“I am.”

“I have a message for you.”

“Go ahead then.”

“It’s… It’s, ‘This one has made me think of some things. Hopefully you can do more for him than I did. I’ll miss you.’”

Steve stared at him for a moment, not comprehending. He had never met this person within the game. Their paths had never crossed. He didn’t know anything about him. “What things did you make him think about?” He asked.

“What you would be like out here with all your memories back. How different you might be.”

Steve felt himself tense. He couldn’t believe this.

“How you might have ended up in a coma too,” the man continued, “what kind of trauma you might have had.”

“Smoke inhalation,” Steve said without thinking.

“What?”

“I ran into a burning building to save someone, and I got knocked out. Smoke inhalation.”

“You’re better off than me.” A bitter tone, harsh.

“I know about that,” Steve said, “Ben thought I might be able to help you.”

“Help me?” the man laughed, “right.”

Steve shrugged, “We’ll see.” He stood up, “After that message, I guess I have to save Herobrine before anything else.”

“Save him?” the man said.

“If they delete the game and he’s still in there, he’ll die, and they will delete it.” Here he looked at the technicians, “you two lobbied for it.”

They both looked bashful.

“More than three quarters of you did,” Steve scolded them, “and you knew what it would do.”

“Maybe,” the man’s red hair was still wet with the stuff from the inside of the tank. It was sticking to his forehead, “you should just let him go.”

Steve looked back at him over his shoulder, already halfway out the door. “What’s your name?”

A hesitation, and then, “Marshall.”

“Marshall,” Steve said, “if you think I’m just going to let him die without tasting the ice cream sundaes they make here, you’re insane.”

“He’s different than I expected,” Marshall said to the technicians when Steve was gone. “I was anticipating someone more breakable. I hope I haven’t screwed him over.”

Herobrine was sitting in his rooms in the nether fortress, staring through the open door to his escape room. The thing inside it was still radiating blue more powerfully than ever. It was calling him. All he would have to do is touch it and he would escape.

But he didn’t really want to escape. He had been thinking about it ever since Marshall had gone. It had been a couple hours now. It wouldn’t be long now until they shut the game down and him with it. It would be the end of him.

Herobrine had lived long enough. He had gotten what he always really wanted: people to share this place with. He had found Steve and with him a fulfillment he had never expected. He did not know what there was left to do besides let go. The man would go on without him, whatever Marshall had thought. Steve was tougher than people gave him credit for. He had to be with his life.

Herobrine kept remembering Silver, the last thing he had communicated before the last copy of his game was destroyed. “Remember this, Herobrine. I’m not doing this because I’m sad. I’m doing this because I’ve never been sad or anything else.” Herobrine wasn’t sad now. He knew what Silver had meant. Suicide did not mean he was sad; he was numb and he was tired, and he could not face the idea of another day in this place without color or in any other place so lackluster.

His ears popped as someone else loaded into the game. He didn’t even need to look to know who it was. “Ben,” he said, “you can’t talk me into it.”

“I’m not going to,” the childish voice said, “I understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”

“Are you here to say goodbye then?”

“No. I’m here to deliver a message.”

Herobrine closed his eyes. Steve’s goodbye, not Ben’s.

“Here,”

He opened his eyes and took the slim black tablet from Ben’s small hand. It was dark for the moment, but soon it was going to light up and he was going to see Steve’s face again. Would it still look the same outside of the game? He hoped so.

“I’ll hold off the delete for as long as you want,” Ben said, “but I can’t do it forever.”

“Have you been preventing it so far?” Herobrine asked.

“Yes. He really wanted to record a goodbye for you.”

His heart gave a little lurch at the thought of that. He had almost died without saying a proper goodbye. “Will you take my reply back to him?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”

Ben popped out of the game again.

The screen of the tablet lit up, and he saw Steve moving backward away from the camera awkwardly. His face was the same. His hair was cut a little shorter, and his cheeks were a little fuller, but he had the same skin tone and the same strange blue-violet eyes. Just looking at him, Herobrine felt himself soften. A smile pulled at his mouth.

“Hey Brine,” Steve said, a smile on his own mouth, “it’s been a long time since I called you that. Almost six months now. I wanted to make this video to tell you I’m doing okay and not to worry about me. Ben didn’t want me to record anything, but I felt like you wouldn’t believe me if you couldn’t see my face.

“I’m doing great. There’s a lot to tell you about, so I hope you don’t mind me rambling.”

“Not at all,” Herobrine said. He leaned the device up against the pillows on the bed and laid on his stomach to watch it.

“First of all, there’s an old friend of mine working here. His name is Adam. He’s the physical therapist. Honestly right now he’s just making sure no one kills themselves with weights. He’s given up on the program he had in place at the beginning of this. You’d like him a lot, I think, if you met him. He and his older brother were like family for me for a long time. Six years they were my second home. It’s actually because of that I was put into the game. I ran into his building when it was on fire to save his little sisters. He let me borrow their picture.” He held up a photographs of two little girls sitting side by side. They were both making bunny ears behind the other’s head. “They’re almost in first grade now,” Steve’s face was obscured by the photograph, “I think they’re doing well. They’re living with Adam and his girlfriend, so at least their away from their drunk of a dad.” He lowered the photograph.

“Adam wouldn’t let me do enough to get my muscle tone back, so I started running in the morning. We’re in the middle of Arizona so I have to get up pretty early, but I think it’s worth it. That and pushups have done wonders. I don’t really like going into the gym with everyone else, and unless I go at three in the morning, there’s someone there…”

On and on it went, the details of Steve’s life outside of the game, the new routine. Herobrine laid on the bed and listened and watched his face change from emotion to emotion as he told story after story. Were Steve’s eyes a little red like he had been crying? He couldn’t tell.

“Mike and Gabe are great,” Steve was saying, “they’re almost done with this job now. After the last player gets out, there isn’t much to do besides write up one last report and go on their way. They’ll hang around for a week or two more, probably. Adam will probably draw out the therapy as long as he can. It’s good for me. They’re supportive.” His face flushed a little, “They were in the room with me 24/7, monitoring my vitals so I didn’t die for some reason. I… I don’t think I have to tell you what they saw that night. They still tease me about it. They mean well, and I can’t tell them not to without turning bright red so I just let them be.

“In the same vein, Clarence tried to kiss me a couple weeks ago. I think he got his hands on alcohol or something because he was acting drunk. I had to push him against a wall to make him stop.”  
Herobrine growled low in his throat.

“It’s not a big deal,” Steve said like he had heard it, “but I thought you might like to know.” There was a pause. “He was a car crash,” Steve said, “a lot of them were actually. He wasn’t drunk at the time. The other person was. It was lucky he lived, but he didn’t wake up.”

It went like that, the little snippets of information about the others. Ivy was being Ivy. She had been a suicide attempt. Hit her head as she was trying to climb back out of the bathtub. Bit was impatient to get home, but would not leave before anyone else did. He had fallen off a ladder onto concrete and was lucky not to have permanent brain damage. Steve himself, he said again, while he was on the subject, had run into a burning building and woken up Adam’s drunk father. In return he had received a punch that had knocked him out and enough smoke inhalation to choke off oxygen to his brain for at least a full minute. “Probably closer to two minutes, according to the medical report.”

“And Gaimon,” Steve said, “you know, the boy you stabbed. He didn’t die of an inexplicable heart attack or anything. He had a stroke. They even traced the blood clot back to an artery in his arm. It was just really unlucky timing, as far as I can tell. Maybe the elevated heart rate from yelling at me shook the clot loose or something.”

Herobrine felt a rush of relief at that. He was not a killer. It hadn’t been him that he killed that boy. Finally, Steve seemed to run out of things to say. He sat in silence for almost a full minute, not looking at the camera.

Herobrine was still smiling, and it was hurting the muscles in his face. It had been so long since he had smiled for so long. His heart was glowing. All the mundanity might have been boring, but the normality was comforting. There was no great abyss, no monster waiting for him inside Steve. Steve was still himself, still the emotional, strong-willed, fragile thing he had been in the game.

“Brine,” Steve said finally, “about an hour ago, I spoke to Marshall. He gave me your message. He told me what he said to you too. I’m not going to lie to you. He’s right that I’m not whole.”

Herobrine’s smile slipped from his face. His heart was aching now.

Steve told him in quick soft words about his mother and father, about his education in private schools, about his camps, first the normal ones then the special ones. It was quick and unemotional and brutal in its detail. It left Herobrine shaking.

“You called it right,” Steve said, “my dragon’s name is Mother, and she’s a bitch to put down.” He sighed, “I’ve been toying with the idea of getting my siblings into my legal custody. The twins won’t be much help, but Rudy is 18 now. She’ll talk about Mother to the police if I ask her to. With her testimony and mine, I might be able to convince them.” He was silent for a long time, toying with the blue pendant hung around his neck. He had already explained what it was, but said he wasn’t planning to use it. “Of course,” he said finally, “I’ll have to get some kind of job first. I’m sure I can get something to pay the bills. They’d be going to public school, and it would be hard to deprogram them, but I could do it. I know how.”

Steve shook himself, “I don’t think I’m unstable,” he said to the camera. “In fact I feel pretty good about my situation. I’m not going to collapse and I’m not going to beg for help from anyone.”

Herobrine nodded a little with him.

“Poor Marshall,” Steve said, “he has it a lot worse than me. A lot worse than any of us. I can understand why he would want to stay in the game.” He looked down at the pendant in his hand, “If I give him this, will it take him away from the life he hates and give him a new one?”

Herobrine nodded again.

“I’ll have to ask Ben. You did ask me to help him. I should give it a shot.” Steve tucked the pendant into his shirt. It was green, not blue. Another normal thing that made this video so precious.

“Okay,” Steve looked into the camera again, dead serious, “this is goodbye. I have run out of things to talk about. This thing is…” he tapped the screen, “thirty minutes long now. I didn’t mean to ramble for so long.

“Look, Brine, Ben and I have talked about this, and I understand why you’ve decided to let go. He told me about Silver and Tails. Not in detail. I didn’t want to ask too much. After that, having them leave you, I can’t really blame you for wanting to follow them. You’ve been alone for so long, it must be a relief to die.”

Herobrine sat up at last. Let go? Follow them? Die?

“When I was younger, every night my mother would tell me about heaven,” Steve was saying, “I think it’s the only good thing she ever did for me. She would sit with me, and read me verses, and tell me all about heaven. Our family who had died would be there, she said, all our loved ones and those who loved us. Angels and fluffy soft clouds was the picture I had then, but, Brine, if heaven exists, it must look like that valley in the mountains. Fruit trees, grass, and blue lakes as far as the eye can see. Places to run, things to explore, and adventures to have. It would be much more interesting than clouds,” He laughed a little, “I hope you’ll find Silver and Tails there. I don’t know who else has left you behind, but surely they’ll be there as well. If God has heard me at all, if there is a God, you’ll find happiness there you couldn’t in the game or here in the long dream.” He stopped talking, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he opened them, there was a thin sheen of tears over the purple hue.

Herobrine had his fists clenched in his lap. His shoulders were shaking a little.

“Herobrine,” Steve said on the screen, and all he wanted to do was kiss the tears off his cheeks, “Brine, I’ll be fine without you. I promise you that. You should do what’s going to make you happy, and if this is what you’ve decided on, you must know already that you’re choosing right. Goodbye, Hero. I’ll miss you.”

The screen of the tablet went dead.

Herobrine stared at it. He was not crying, but he was close. He reached out to the tablet and tapped on the screen, but the battery had died as the video ended and he could not replay it. All he wanted was to see Steve again, the smiling face at the beginning of the video, the man he remembered. He was there. He was right there, all light and sweetness. Herobrine could taste the peaches on his lips, could feel the rise and fall of his chest, could hear his laughter and the soothing words whispered to him. The firelight came back to him, the meals caught fresh out of lakes and picked off trees that he had so adored, the sparring matches that ended in wrestling matches.

Outside the game it would be different. He knew that, but Steve would still be there. Steve, shouldering new responsibilities, giving up on old dreams to try to save his siblings. Steve, who ran in the early mornings because he could not stand to be still. Steve, who would give up his pendant, his refuge among monsters, to save someone he barely knew. Steve was out there. And suddenly he remembered the others, the ones who could not die. They were out there too. They would welcome him with open arms, take him without question into their lives. Jack would remember Steve for sure, and even without the pendant they could go together into that world.

His ears popped.

“Do you have an answer?” Ben asked, sounding like the last thing he wanted to do was carry a suicide note back to Steve.

Herobrine nodded, “Are you sure that thing will work?” he said, indicating the closet emitting blue light.

“It will,” Ben said, “I’ve had it ready for you for years.”

“Clear out a room and tell me when you’re ready.”

The boy’s voice was suddenly light, “You’re not staying?”

“After that?” Herobrine laughed painfully, “I couldn’t.”

“You can use it right now,” Ben said, “I know just where to put you.”

“Get Steve first,” Herobrine said, “he needs to be the first one there when it’s over. If something goes wrong, I want him to know I tried.”

“Okay,” Ben paused, “he’s on his way.”

Herobrine wiped the water from his eyes and stood up. He crossed to the closet and took the globe in his hands. He looked down at it, the miniaturized continents and the wide expanses of ocean. When he put it into the shadows, millions of tiny white lights flickered on over the dark landscape, lighting it up. It was a beautiful thing.

He squeezed the globe, shattering it into millions of glass shards that fell around his feet. The blue energy contained inside of it stayed hovering in the air, his hands inside of it. His fingers started to tingle, then go numb, fade out of existence altogether. The light expanded up his arms as they disappeared from view.

Herobrine gritted his teeth and stepped forward into the light.

Steve was running when the lights went out. He wasn’t crying anymore. The only thing in the world that mattered was reachin room 4980 and meeting Herobrine there. Far away, factories ground to a halt, cities went dark. In thousands of hospital ICUs, nurses and doctors panicked only to discover that somehow the machines keeping their patients alive were still functioning.

“Ben?” he said, pulling up short in the dark hallway, “what’s happening?”

A screen on the wall came up, the barest amount of light it could emit coming from the screen. “I’m building him a new body,” Ben said, “I need a lot of energy.”

“How much of the world is blacked out right now?” Steve asked, already knowing the answer.

“All of it. It should only take ten minutes.”

“All of this to save one life,” Steve thought as he felt his way along the hall, “if we can’t do this much for one person like Herobrine, we shouldn’t be called humans.”

Finally he reached it. It was not exactly difficult to find. Room 4980 was completely full of blue-white light from floor to ceiling. It looked almost solid. All of the energy of the whole world was being redirected into that room.

Steve stood in front of room 4980 and shielded his eyes from the intense light. There was no heat coming from the space. In fact, it seemed that it was colder the closer he got to it.

“What’s happening?” Adam called to him from down the hall. He slid to a halt beside Steve and looked at the blue-white light coming from the room. He was not slow. It only took them a moment to figure out what was happening. “How long?” he asked.

“Five minutes?” Steve replied. “I’m not sure.”

“I’ll get Mike and Gabe and find a stretcher.”

Janus slid up to him next, almost skidding on the smooth tile floor. She took one look at the room and said to Steve, “Let me help.”

He glared at her.

“My mother and I both work with non-humans. We know more about their bodies than anyone else. I can help him.”

Steve blinked. “In that case, okay, but don’t even think about sticking him in a cell again.”

Janus looked down and didn’t reply. He took it as as much assent as she would give.

Adam returned with the technicians and a rolling stretcher.

“Let me go in first,” Steve said to them, “If he’s disoriented, I’m the least likely to get hurt.”

They all nodded.

The silence lasted almost three minutes. Then the lights in the hallway came back on. The blue-white glow did not fade right away. It lingered, throwing sparks like a dying fire.

The screen beside the door beeped when Steve moved to open it. “Not yet,” it read.

“Did that hurt him?” Steve asked quietly.

“No,” Ben typed, “he shouldn’t have felt anything.”

Steve didn’t remove his hand, watching the light in the room disperse, fading out in pulses like a dying lightbulb. Finally, before it had dispersed completely, the message on the screen changed. “Go ahead.”

Steve slid the door to the side and stepped into the room. Behind him, the glass walls turned opaque, hiding the others from view. Almost immediately, Adam started hammering on the door, but a moment later, he was restrained.

Steve squinted through the remaining light in the room. There was a dark shape on the floor, tanned skin pressed against the tile. He knelt beside the body.

Herobrine was breathing deeply, like he was sleeping. Other than that he was totally still. His eyes were closed. He was naked, but Steve had expected that. He also looked like he had lost weight. He was much thinner than Steve remembered. It must have taken too much energy to provide him with the extra muscle. Ben had given him just the basics.

Steve lifted his head off the floor, bent close. “Brine?” he said.

Herobrine stirred, face twisting into a wince and then a pained frown. His eyes opened halfway, closed again, then opened all the way. They were still pure white, still glowing a little.

“Brine?” Steve said again, giving him a little shake, “Herobrine?”

His eyes glowed brighter, and Herobrine shook his head a little. He smiled, reaching up to Steve’s face. His hand was soft and smooth, without calluses.

“Stevie,” Herobrine said, “I made it?”

“You made it,” Steve sat down on the floor and pulled Herobrine into his arms. “You made it. Thank God you made it.”

Herobrine slid his arms around Steve’s neck and returned the embrace. He rested his forehead against the human’s.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked him, “are you hurt?”

“I’m tired,” Herobrine said, his eyes sliding half shut again, “I’m so tired.”

“But you aren’t hurting?” Steve removed one of Herobrine’s arms from around his neck and took the man’s pulse. It was steady and strong.

Herobrine shook his head. He looked down at himself. “Naked,” he said simply.

Player kissed his forehead, not wanting to kiss him properly just yet. “Can you sit up?”

Herobrine nodded.

“I’ll get you clothes.” Steve let him go slowly. Herobrine folded his legs beneath him on the floor and sat there, eyes blinking heavily.

Steve rummaged through the cabinet, looking for what he knew was there somewhere. Finally he found it: the thin set of clothes that was kept in every room.

“Here we go,” he said to Herobrine, “stand up.”

He did, with a little help, unsteady on his brand new legs. Steve got the shirt on him, then the thin pants, doing most of the work himself. Herobrine was swaying in place now, a hand resting on Steve’s shoulder to keep himself steady.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m going to fall asleep,” Herobrine said. He started to sit down again, sliding down the wall to the floor, but Steve stopped him.

“Put your arms around my neck again,” he said, “there’s a bed right outside you can sleep on.”

Herobrine complied clumsily. He put his full weight on Steve’s body at once, collapsing against him. Steve caught him under the thighs and lifted him up as he had in the walled city.

“Open the door for us,” he said to no one.

The door slid open and he stepped into the hallway, wincing under the load. He set Herobrine down on the stretcher, carefully removing the arms from around his neck. Herobrine was too sleepy to argue.

The man mumbled something nonsensical. His eyes were almost closed again.

“This,” Steve said to Adam, “is why you should let me lift whatever weight I want.”

Herobrine laid himself down on the stretcher. He took Steve’s hand as he did, gave it a squeeze. His white eyes closed completely, and his breathing resumed its slow pace as he sank into sleep.

Steve bent over him, listening to his breathing. Herobrine’s skin was cool and clammy against his.

“I’m freaking out,” Mike said, “I am seriously freaking out.”

Gabe was quicker to recover. He bent over Herobrine along with Steve, feeling around his neck, pressing with practiced hands all the way down his torso. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked.

“He said he was tired,” Steve squeezed the man’s hand, “I can’t blame him.”

“Well,” Gabe said, “luckily this facility is very good at taking care of sleeping people.”

“Do not put him into one of the pods,” Steve said.

“We won’t.”

Adam looked down at the sleeping man. He looked back and forth between Steve and Herobrine a few times, and then he said, “You realize this is weird, right?”

Steve nodded, but said nothing.He looked at Janus, “What should we do?” he asked.

She had a hand over her mouth and was shaking her head very slowly.

“You said you knew about this,” Steve protested, “why are you here if you can’t help?”

“I’ve never actually met one before,” she said softly.

Steve turned away from her, growling in annoyance. “Let’s get him to a real bed,” he said.

“He needs an IV,” Mike said, “fluids.”

“Where should we put him?”

“One of the old rooms.”

The technicians took over with practiced ease. They pulled the cart away from Steve, making him lose his grip on Herobrine’s hand. He hurried along after them, Adam beside him and just as concerned as he was.

They went past the cafeteria as they went, and all the players there turned to look at them. Three more technicians left the crowd and hurried to them. When they saw what was on the cart, one stopped moving entirely. The other two joined Mike and Gabe and started running for supplies.

The halls of the compound were full of shouting as an IV bag stand and bag were located, extra blankets brought. Herobrine stirred twice, his sleep light, but never opened his eyes.

Steve was forced out of the room as they worked on Herobrine, but only for about ten minutes, then the crowd of technicians left and he managed to push his way through and pull up a chair beside the bed. Herobrine had been tucked beneath several blankets, his face had lost a lot of color in the few minutes they had been separated and an IV drip had been inserted into his left arm.

Steve waited until everyone else had left the room, and then he took Herobrine’s free hand and brought it to his lips. He didn’t say anything, but he kept hold of that hand, and didn’t move until Gabe and Mike forced him to leave the room for dinner.

Herobrine slept for two whole days. Steve could not bring himself to leave his side for longer than a half hour. He could not sleep for fear that Herobrine would die while he slept. It seemed very likely that he would die. He got progressively paler and less responsive, not even reacting when Steve kissed his cheek, something had made him turn his head on the first day.

“You’re going to be okay,” Steve told him over and over, trying to make himself believe it too.

On the second day in the afternoon, he started dozing off still holding Herobrine’s hand. It was just as his head dipped that the woman burst into the room.

She was followed by Janus’s voice saying, “Mom!”

Steve sat up with a jolt, looking at the woman. “Who?” He said.

“Ana Dane,” she said, “out of the way: I have a blood transfusion to deliver.” She stepped around to the other side of Herobrine’s bed and started fiddling with the IV bag.

Janus followed her into the room, “Mom!” she said, “You can’t just burst in here. We have the situation under control.”

“Bullshit,” Ana Dane said, “you’re actually going to manage to kill one of them, and we can’t have that.”

Janus looked aghast, “But he’s a--”

“He’s not made right,” Ana said.

“What?” Steve asked, and then as she hung a bag of red liquid on the IV stand, “What are you doing?”

The look she gave him was full of empathy, “No, no, he’s physically okay. He needs a jumpstart.”

“Blood?” Steve said as she finished hooking him up, “They gave him blood a couple hours ago.”

“Whose?”

“I don’t know.”

“What type?”

“O-negative I think.”

“Well that’s what this is too,” she said.

“Then what difference will it make?”

She gave him a smile, “Still some things left for you to learn. That blood is from a special donor. It’ll pep him right up.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” She reached down and gave his shoulder a squeeze, “It’s okay. I’ve been doing this for a lot longer than my daughter. I know what needs to be done.”

Steve relaxed. He picked Herobrine’s hand back up in both of his and squeezed his fingers gently. He closed his eyes.

He heard Janus come into the room. “Whose blood is it?” she asked.

“Someone you know well,” Ana replied, “now be quiet. You should have called me right away. You’ve just dodged a bullet.” Then, in a different tone, “Sweety,” she said.

Steve opened his eyes and looked at her. “Steve,” he said.

“You should get something for him to eat. Something high in calories, lots of fats and sugars.”

Steve stared at her.

“That blood will give him a boost, but if he doesn’t get a lot of calories fast he might crash. Anything sweet should do the trick.”

Steve looked at her, into her dark eyes. The face looking back at him was at least sixty, maybe older, care-worn and hard, but with smile lines around the eyes. She certainly looked like Janus’s mother, but she seemed much more confident in her abilities.

“We have about five minutes until he wakes up,” she said, “go now.”

Steve got to his feet and left the room. He sprinted to the cafeteria and went right up to the head chef. They had a sort of relationship. Everyone in the room was staring at his back as he spoke fast, explaining what he needed.

“Give me two minutes,” the chef said, already scrubbing his hands in the sink. A couple minutes later, he handed over an insulated bowl covered by a black plastic lid. “Best of luck,” he said, “give your friend my best.”

Steve thanked him profusely and hurried off down the hall again, not running this time for fear of dropping the bowl.

Herobrine was still asleep when he returned. His cheeks were rosy and there was sweat on his skin.

“When did he get a fever?” Steve asked as he set the bowl down.

“A minute ago,” Ana said, “don’t worry. It’s normal with the blood. It will pass in time.”

“He was almost ice-cold before,” Steve said.

“Not a good sign.”

Herobrine stirred as he sat down and took his hand. He turned his head side to side like he was having a bad dream.

“He’s coming around,” Ana said, pushing Janus back as she stepped away herself.

Steve looked at them. “Why are you backing up?”

“If I had any kind of compatibility with non-humans, I wouldn’t be in this line of work,” Ana said.

Steve stopped paying attention right there because Herobrine had opened his eyes. He looked first at the IV dip in his arm, the bag of blood, and then at his hand clutched in Steve’s. He found Steve’s face and smiled at him.

“I figured out what you did,” Herobrine said to him, “you tricked me.”

Steve was suddenly nervous. Was Herobrine going to be angry?

“I’m glad you did,” Herobrine said, “I needed it.”

Steve sighed in relief. He rested his head against Herobrine’s knuckles in his hand.

“What are you doing here?” Herobrine asked the two women in the room. He sounded hostile.

“I’m going to detach you from that IV, and then we’re going to go.” Ana said.

Steve watched her disconnect the bags with a practiced hand. When she was done with that she pushed the stand to the side and took Janus by the elbow, pulling her out of the room.

“Eat,” she said, pointing to the bowl. Then the door closed.

Steve dropped Herobrine’s hand and tried to remove the cover on the bowl. “You need to eat this,” he said, “Ana said something about that blood making you crash if you didn’t have enough calories.”

Herobrine was looking at him with that expression on his face, such love in his eyes it hurt Steve to look at him. He gave up on taking the lid off the bowl as Herobrine touched his arm. He leaned in and kissed him on the mouth, then did it again when Herobrine put a hand on the back of his neck. He pulled away and pried the lid off of the bowl.

“That video,” Herobrine said, “was brilliant.”

“I figured you needed some normalcy in your life.”

“You were right, but did you have to make it so painful?”

“I wasn’t faking.” The lid finally popped off and Steve grunted in satisfaction. He passed it to Herobrine and then handed him a spoon.

The man stared at the contents of the bowl for a long moment. “I’ve never had ice cream,” he said.

“Good time to try it,” He watched Herobrine take a small spoonful, barely a taste, and put it in his mouth.

His eyes closed again, but this time it was in pleasure. “That,” he said after he swallowed, “Is amazing.”

“I’m going to enjoy showing you this world,” Steve said, and yawned.

Herobrine looked up at him, spoon still in his mouth. “You need a nap?”

“I haven’t slept since you got here.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two days.”

Herobrine stopped moving, “Sleep.” he ordered, and in his voice Player heard the echoes of resonance that had once defined it.

“I will,” Steve said, “just as soon as I know you’re safe.”

Herobrine looked at him hard, “You weren’t lying in the video, were you?”

“No,” Steve said, “but I have been worried. I don’t want you to die, and it looked like you were going to for too long.”

Herobrine put down his spoon and touched Steve’s cheek. “I’m fine,” he said, “rest. You have other things to worry about besides me.”

“I know,” Steve picked up the spoon and stole a mouthful of ice cream from the bowl.

Herobrine glared at him, “Not funny.”

Steve just grinned at him.

Herobrine snatched the spoon back and continued eating. Steve waited until he was done, and then picked up the bowl and took it back to the cafeteria.

He went back to Herobrine’s room and found him awake and alert, perfectly healthy. Steve took a nap with his head in Herobrine’s lap, the man’s fingers running through his hair.


	66. The Long Dream

From “The End Poem” for Herobrine.

“What did this player dream?”

“This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter. Sometimes, it dreamed of friendship, but more often it dreamed it was alone. It dreamed of a world beyond the one it knew, and it dreamed of love.”

“A life beyond the game, what it had always wanted?”

“It worked, alone, to sculpt a true world it never knew.”

“Will it never attain the highest level?”

“Maybe, someday, it will move into the long dream and be given that chance.”

* * *

It was a simple thing: People did not like Herobrine and, as a rule, Herobrine did not like people. The one exception was Adam, who he liked quite a bit and who liked him well enough. So everyone besides Steve and Adam were eager to get as far away from Herobrine as they could.

They arranged a day to let everyone leave the facilities only a two days later. The sun was pounding on the ground. Herobrine was complaining about it, but he had his arm around Steve’s waist anyway as long as they were in the shade. Steve was shivering a little despite the heat. He was going to be forced to see his mother again. He was probably going to have to go back to that house.

Herobrine leaned into him and kissed his temple. “You’re okay,” he said softly, “I’m right here for you.”

“I love you,” Steve said without looking at him.

He got no words in response, only another kiss where no one could see them, Herobrine’s eyes closed behind the dark sunglasses he was wearing. 

“We should go,” Herobrine said, “the party is starting without us.”

Steve got to his feet and helped Herobrine to his. They held hands to the corner of the building, gripping hard.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Steve said.

“It’s going to be hard not to yell at your Mother.”

“We’ll figure it out. As soon as I have the details ironed out with Ana and Janus, I’ll get us a place of our own.”

Herobrine was a little behind him. He didn’t have to ask what the man was thinking. How long was it going to take to get a place of their own?

“We’re pretty far from home,” he said, “we might stay in a hotel tonight.”

Herobrine made an approving noise. Then he paused, gazing across the plaza. He shot past Steve and sprinted across the open space in front of the building. No one paid him any mind.

Steve followed him more slowly, confused. He watched Herobrine slam into two men across the square from him, actually slam into them bodily. One of them caught Herobrine against his chest and returned the embrace. He didn’t even stumble backwards. The other man was in the shadows of a building and didn’t seem in a hurry to show himself.

Steve pulled up short, out in the sun. Herobrine was speaking rapidly to the two men, having been drawn into the shadows and partially out of view.

“This is bad,” Steve said.

“Maybe,” said a woman’s voice from beside him. He turned and looked at her. She was shorter than he was by almost five inches with black hair and soft pale skin. She turned and looked back at him. Her eyes were large and liquid and blue like an ocean seen from above.

“Who are you?” Steve asked.

She smiled, “You can call me Siren.” Her incisors were too long and pointed like the fangs of a snake. “No need to ask who you are, Steve.”

He sighed, “That’s good.” He was still watching Herobrine and the two men in the shadows.

“Don’t worry about them,” Siren said, “they’re not going to hurt him or you.”

“I’m not worried about them,” Steve looked around, “my mom should be around here somewhere, and I want Herobrine to be with me when I meet her.”

She looked at him for a long time, then slung her arm around his shoulders, up on tip-toe to reach. “I like you,” she said to him, “you’re a sweetheart.”

“I’m really not into--” he started.

“Neither am I,” she assured him, and a look of such loss and pain came to her face that he thought she was going to cry. Her hand went to her throat, to the chain of a necklace there, “I had that burned out of me.”

He swallowed hard.

Siren went back to her chipper attitude like nothing had happened, “Wanna know something else?”

“Sure,” he was beginning to warm to her.

“Herobrine doesn’t know I’m still alive,” she said with a giggle, “any second now he’s going to turn around and see me.”

Herobrine turned around and started walking toward Steve, still talking to the two men behind him. He saw Siren and his mouth dropped open. He turned pale as he came forward.

“Steve,” he said, “come here.”

Steve glanced at Siren and then moved away from her and to him. “What?” he asked.

Herobrine leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Stay close to me. They don’t want to take me with him, but they might decide you’re a nice snack.”

Steve was looking at the man he knew as Jack. He was the man who had been in the shadows.

Jack looked back at him from behind his own dark glasses, cocked his head to the side. “There you are,” he said.

Steve nodded to him.

“Do you still have the token?” Jack asked.

“No,” Steve said, “I gave it to Marshall. He needs it more than I do?”

“Who?”

Steve turned and pointed the man out. He was sitting against the wall of the compound looking down at the pendant he held in his hand. “Would you talk to him?”

“Of course,” Jack walked past him and towards Marshall.

“Oh now you’ve given him a project,” the other man sighed, pushing his long black hair out of his face, “we won’t see him for months.” The large shaggy dog trotted out of the shadows the men had been standing in and pressed its head against the man’s leg. He scratched it idly behind the ears.

“Really?” Steve asked, half about the dog and half about Jack.

The man shrugged, “he likes doing that kind of thing. It makes him feel better.”

“Speaking of which,” Siren said, “What’s your plan?”

Herobrine spoke up, “We’re going with Steve’s family.”

She looked at him, disappointment showing on her face, “You sure? I can take you wherever you want to go.”

“I didn’t even know you were around,” Herobrine said.

Siren looked at Steve then, playful, “He had a crush on me,” she said.

Steve laughed, “Really?”

Herobrine was blushing. He was actually blushing.

“Oh ya,” she said, “back when I was human and he was stuck in that game, Ben brought him out and by the end of the week he was just begging to get into bed with me.”

“Stop it,” Herobrine said, but it was a small voice.

Steve was laughing, but hearing this stung a little. He put his arm around Herobrine’s waist and pulled him close. “That’s so cute.”

The man grumbled something about not taking him seriously. Steve gave him a reassuring squeeze.

“If you two are sure,” Siren said, “we’ll go. There are other things to be done.”

Herobrine nodded.

She looked at Steve, then pulled out a piece of paper and gave it to him. “You ever need help,” she said, “call that number. I’ll be there in five seconds. Or, if you want, you can call that number and I’ll take you anywhere in the world you want to go.”

“Thank you,” he said, meaning it.

“No problem,” She turned and headed away into the shadows by the building. The man looked after her and sighed. He walked towards where Jack was speaking to Marshall, but he stopped beside Herobrine. “You take care of this one,” he said, indicating Steve, “he’s worth it.”

Herobrine smiled and nodded. He knew that already.

Once he had walked away with the dog at his heels, Steve said, “I see her.”

“Where?”

“Over there,” he only gestured with his head.

Herobrine scanned the crown in that area, but couldn’t pick the woman out. “Which one?”

“The small one with the flat hair and the frown.”

Now he saw her, “How did she make you?” he said incredulously.

Steve scowled at him.

“Stevie,” Herobrine said, “you are her polar opposite physically.”

“I take after my father.”

“Will I get to meet him, do you think?”

“No.”

“Well you just met my family,” Herobrine said, “I guess it’s time for me to meet yours.”

“They’re your family?” Steve asked.

“Closest I’ve got.” His voice changed, “Do not let Siren get so close to you. Jack and his friend are harmless for you, but she,” he shuddered, “will give you one little nip with those fangs of hers and it will be over.”

“Would she do that?”

“Without question,” he leaned into Steve as they started walking towards the woman he had pointed out, “how public will I have to be before your mom freaks out and kicks us out of the house?”

“Just kiss my cheek,” Steve said, “anything more and I might not be allowed to pack.”

“Will you even fit in the clothes you have there?”

“I haven’t been growing much since I turned 16,” Steve said, “and that was almost six years ago now. I’ll be able to salvage something.”

“You know,” Herobrine said, “I’ve been wondering. Steve is an irregular name for your sort of family. Shouldn’t you be named Matthew or Luke or John?”

Steve sighed, “I was supposed to be named Eve.”

Herobrine snorted.

“I know,” Steve said, “but she,” he indicated his mother, “was dead set on it, even when I turned out to be a boy. She filled out the birth certificate and everything.”

“So what happened?”

“When she wasn’t looking, my dad grabbed it and wrote in the letters S-T. Voila: Steve White.”

Herobrine was grinning. 

“What?” Steve asked.

“You hate apples.”

He just stared for a second, “I’m going to take my sweet time packing.”

“That’s just mean,” Herobrine protested. Steve could tell he wanted to sweep him into a hug, but he had asked Herobrine to refrain from public displays of affection and the man was keeping his word.

“You deserve it,” he said.

“It needed to be said.” 

“No it didn’t.”

Softly, in his ear, “I love you.”

Steve shivered, “Too close,” he said.

Herobrine was thinking, “You know,” he said, “we could get Siren to take us somewhere sunny for a week before we go back and get your stuff.”

“We have no money.”

“You have no money,” Herobrine corrected, “I’m sure my family has something stashed away.”

“No,” Steve said flatly.

“Okay, just a suggestion.”

“Here we go,” Steve said as his mother saw them.

She hurried over, her hands coming up. “Steve!” she exclaimed, “you’re okay, oh thank God.”

He pulled away from her even before she touched him, a knee-jerk reaction that made Herobrine want to step between them. “Hello, Mother,” he said in a tone the man had never heard before.

“What happened?” she asked, “we were told we couldn’t go into the facility because we might make you all sick. How long have you been awake?”

“Not long,” Steve said.

Herobrine glanced at him. The man was tense already. He couldn’t sit by for this, but he had to. He would kiss Steve until he was better later.

“You must have been so lonely,” his mother was saying, “did you get my package?”

“I did. It was very thoughtful.”

So that was where he had gotten the bible from. He had it in his bag right then. He hadn’t so much as opened it.

“I just knew you would need it,” she said, “being surrounded by all these--”

Herobrine stepped in as Steve’s face started to shut down. “Mrs. White?” he said.

She looked up at him, then at her son, then back to the man wearing sunglasses. “Yes?” she said hesitantly.

“My name is Hero,” he said, offering a hand for her to shake, “I’m Steve’s friend.”

She shook his hand, and he felt the bones and muscles in her hand, hard and unforgiving. “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

Steve stepped in, the prepared story flowing from him easily, “Hero doesn’t have any family,” he said, “I said we could find space for him for a week or two, until we can find somewhere else to live.”

It was a mistake, but she seemed to miss it. “Of course we can do that,” she looked up at Herobrine, “you’re welcome in our house until you can find somewhere else.”

“Thank you,” he said, thinking, “if only she knew, she’d be screaming at me to get away from her son.”

“Steve!” A voice called out, and Clarence was suddenly there between them. He looked excited and happy. He had recovered well. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” he said, “I know we’re not on the best terms, but I’m really going to miss you.”

“Of course, Clarence.” Steve said stiffly, watching his mother over the man’s shoulder, “I’ll get in touch with you somehow, okay?”

Clarence picked up on the strange mood and stopped bouncing. He glanced at Herobrine, then turned and looked at the little woman in front of Steve. He had picked up enough from Adam to understand, and he wanted nothing to do with this. “Okay,” he said to Steve, “I’ll find you.” and he darted away again fast.

The woman looked disgusted. She gave her son a long look. “You and I need to have a talk,” she said.

Steve nodded a little, and Herobrine only just stopped himself from breaking up the conversation.

“Come on then,” the woman said, “both of you.” She cast a glance towards Herobrine, “I’ll get you straightened out.”

They both sat in the back of the car on the way home, holding hands where she could not see them, taking turns answering polite questions about the game. Every time his mother opened her mouth, Herobrine felt Steve’s hand tighten in his. Halfway there, he made up his mind. They could not do this. It was toxic for Steve to so much as set foot in that house.

He leaned in close to Steve and whispered, “How long will it take for you to pack your stuff?”

Steve glanced at him, “Not long.”

Herobrine sighed through his nose, “We should leave right after you do.”

“Brine…” he said, and then, “Okay. I’ll find some money for a hotel.”

“I’ll find us somewhere to stay,” Herobrine said, “I’ll need that phone number Siren gave you, but I can do it.”

“What would I do without you,” Steve sounded like a great weight had been lifted from him.

“You’d do the same thing,” Herobrine said, “you’d just be doing it alone.”

“Something to share?” Steve’s mother asked from the front seat.

“We’re just talking about Steve’s job,” Herobrine improvised.

“A job?” she asked.

“Yes,” Steve said, “A doctor offered me a position as an intern. It’s a once in a lifetime chance.”

“That’s great! Where is it?”

Steve took a breath, “Washington.”

She glanced at him, “Well that won’t work. You have to stay with us.”

“I’d really like to take it,” Steve said, Herobrine squeezing his hand, “it’s a dream job.”

“No means no, Steve. Don’t argue.”

He shut his mouth and looked down.

It was a long time later they got to the house. Steve didn’t say another word for the whole drive. When he got out of the car, two kids that looked to be about fourteen came charging out of the house and gave him hugs, asking a million questions. Right from that moment, Herobrine could tell he adored them more than anything in the world. He would do anything for those two kids, but as they spoke, Steve was realizing they were gone, that there was no hope of him reaching them. Herobrine could see it in his posture and his face. Steve was losing it all right here and now. Then he looked back at Herobrine, still standing by the car, and he took a breath to strengthen himself.

“Thank goodness I didn’t leave him to face all this alone,” Herobrine thought, “this and losing me would have killed him.”

Steve introduced him to the twins. Rudy was living with her husband in another state. She had not been able to come see him. They both seemed a little put off by his appearance, but nice enough.

Steve made some excuse and got both himself and Herobrine into his old room. Herobrine did not even have to look around to know that there was nothing of Steve in this room, that it was a space made for him by his mother. He didn’t look.

“Okay,” Steve said, “Call Siren. There’s a landline down the hall. I’m going to put some stuff in a bag.”

Herobrine called Siren. He didn’t ask her for a pickup, only to tell him where the closest house was. She picked up on his mood and didn’t even tease him, just told him to go three streets over and look for number 46. That was a safe house and she was pretty sure it was empty just then.

He thanked her and hung up.

Steve was just coming out of his room carrying a small suitcase. In the one glance Herobrine managed to get into the space again, he saw two bibles stacked one on top of the other on the bedside table.

“Mom,” Steve said, “change of plan. I’m going to find a place to stay near here until I can get the job details straight.”

She straightened up and looked at him, “Steve,” she said, “don’t be absurd. Your place is here.”

“No,” he said, “it’s not.”

Herobrine followed him into the kitchen and towards to the door to the house.

“Steve,” his mother said, “don’t disrespect me.”

The man stopped. He shuddered once, started to turn back.

Herobrine put a hand on his back, “It’s okay,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice, “let’s go.”

Steve nodded.

“Are you encouraging my son to abandon us?” She asked.

Herobrine looked at her. “Stevie,” he said, “are you ever going to come back here?”

Steve shook his head.

“You don’t mind if I spill the beans then?”

“Not at all.”

Herobrine spun him around effortlessly, his arms around Steve’s waist, and kissed him right there in front of them all. He felt the human melt, felt him come alive at the contact. Steve made a little noise of pleasure into his mouth at the relief of stress.

All three of his present family members were staring in open horror.

“And that,” Steve said, “is why I’m leaving.” he sounded satisfied and not at all ashamed of himself, still nose-to-nose with Herobrine. He pulled back and tugged the man out of the door after him, fingers intertwined.

A scream of horror rose behind them, but they cut it off with the door between them.

Steve started laughing as they walked down the driveway to the road. “I didn’t know it would feel that good,” he said, “I can never go back, but I don’t ever want to!”

Herobrine relaxed, “I can’t believe them,” he said sourly.

“You can disapprove of my family all you want,” Steve assured him, “after we get to the new house. Knowing mom she’ll try to run us down with the car.”

Herobrine glanced back over his shoulder, then sighed and pulled off the sunglasses. The color and brightness made him squint for a minute, but that passed.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Steve asked.

“Yes I do,” Herobrine said, and then, much more suggestively, “You know what’s great about these safe houses?”

“What?”

“They all have great big beds and private bathrooms.”

Steve looked at him in silence for a minute, then said, “I’m not really in the mood for that anymore.”

Herobrine shrugged, “Almost all of them also have fully stocked freezers and big televisions too. How we spend the night is up to us.”

Steve squeezed his hand, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Herobrine said.

“Will you be happy working with Ana and Janus?” Steve asked.

“I think I will,” Herobrine said, “it sounds like a lot of travelling.”

“Travelling is good,” Steve agreed, “it will be a lot less interesting than hiking through the woods, but much easier in the end.”

“It might be hard to support two kids like that though.”

Steve sighed, “I can’t get them anyway, not after the stunt we just pulled. They’ll never speak to me again.”

“Maybe someday,” Herobrine said.

“Maybe.”

“Well,” Herobrine asked, “did we kill the dragon?”

“We killed the one in my head at least,” Steve said, “not that you can really kill a thing like her.”

“No,” Herobrine said, “but you can keep her unfed and small.”

“Maybe I’ll try that then.”

“Steve,” Herobrine said, “I love you, don’t forget that.”

“I love you too.” Steve said, “and don’t you forget it either.”

“I won’t.”

Behind them in the Whites’ house, the twins were looking at the two receding figures out of the window. They looked at each other, then back at their screaming mother, then back out the window.

“They look happy,” The boy said finally.

“They do,” The girl replied.

And they left it at that, each privately promising themselves they would get in touch with their brother again.


End file.
